


Things that Happen after Eddie Lives

by IfItHollers



Series: Things that Happen After [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Anxiety, Audra Denbrough deserved better, Awkward Sex, BAMF Beverly Marsh, Bedsharing, Canon-Typical Racism, Coming Out, Drunkenness, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak has a paralyzing fear of sexuality, Eddie Kaspbrak has the touch, Emetophobia, First Time, Friendship, Getting Together, Internalized Homophobia, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Magic, Mental Health Issues, Parallel Dimensions Theory, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), References to Suicide, Richie Tozier has a paralyzing fear of emotions, Richie Tozier is also a friggin idiot, Richie Tozier is really smart, Richie makes black jokes, Richie makes fat jokes, Richie makes gay jokes, Richie throws his back out and it's not even hot, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Stanley Uris Has The Shining, Stanley Uris will have his say and that's that, Stefon references, Stephen King References, cameo - Henry Deaver (Castle Rock), canon-typical domestic abuse, canon-typical emotional abuse, mix of book and film canon, psychiatric help, references to drug abuse, the Voice of the Losers Club is Richie Tozier, there's only one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-24 13:13:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 107,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20706578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IfItHollers/pseuds/IfItHollers
Summary: In a world where Richie manages to save Eddie from It after the deadlights, they still have problems on their to-do list. Featuring everything from Derry to Los Angeles—Richie Tozier's murder trial, Eddie Kaspbrak's divorce proceedings, bedsharing of the platonic and non-platonic varieties, an investigation of magic, a truly disgusting séance, the quintessential morosexual road trip, and OH MY GOD THEY WERE ROOMMATES.





	1. In Derry

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Things That Happen After Eddie Lives](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21000368) by [znamenskaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/znamenskaya/pseuds/znamenskaya)

> Hey, content warnings--if you've read the summary you know the premise is that Richie saw Eddie's death in the deadlights and managed to prevent it by twisting out of the way _just in time!_ So we have Eddie's canonical face-injury, the Derry Police racially profiling Mike, Myra's domestic abuse towards Eddie, Richie's self-loathing internal monologue, mentions of Bev's domestic abuse, Bill awkwardly trying to make it his emotional infidelity offscreen, some homophobic graffiti down by the kissing bridge (taken directly from the book), and in the background Richie's being tried for something like second degree murder. Richie makes a black joke and a fat joke at the same dinner party.
> 
> But also we've got sleepovers, Richie beating the shit out of a radio because he hates a Rilo Kiley album, use of muscle relaxers, Ben being deadpan and also the best boyfriend (TM), and Richie trying to get Eddie to the kissing bridge.

Eddie refuses to dunk his head in the quarry.

“There’s a fucking hole in my face, Richie, you asshole,” Eddie says.

“Can’t hear you,” Richie says, leaning harder and harder on him.

“Richie—”

“Can’t hear you.”

“Richie, I swear to _Lucifer_—”

“Can’t hear you,” he says, and ducks under the water and yanks on Eddie’s ankle.

Eddie kicks him in the face—but not as hard as he could have, and he’s slowed by the water resistance, so the only thing that happens is Richie’s glasses go sliding off one ear and then he loses them entirely.

When he comes back up, blinded and wiping water out of his face, all he hears is, “You fucking asshole, Richie, I cannot believe this, do you even know what a staph infection is? It’s been twenty-seven years, have you learned what a fucking staph infection is? I’m gonna have to take antibiotics, and then I’m going to develop an immunity, and then I’m going to contribute to the worldwide epidemic of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and _then_ I’m going to get MRSA, and it’s going to be _all your fault_, Richie—”

Richie blinks a bit and counts the visible heads in the water—Mike is immediately identifiable, and Bill with his red hair, and he’s practically on top of Eddie, but they’ve lost Ben and Bev somewhere. About fucking time, Richie thinks, because he’s nothing if not a hypocrite, and he puts both arms over Eddie’s shoulders and floats on him.

“Yeah, yeah, gray water, I heard you the first eighty times,” he says idly.

“This is not—_this is not _gray water, this is standing water, and there are mosquitos and bug larvae and—” Eddie gives a full-body shudder and Richie is still in love with him.

“Hey Eddie,” Richie says, letting his voice get quieter and quieter. “Hey Eddie. Hey Eddie.”

“Fucking_ what_?”

Richie knows what his eyes must look like right now, feeling tiny and swollen with water. He must look like a goddamn naked mole rat. He inclines his head and looks gravely at Eddie, getting closer and closer until Eddie’s eyes—big liquid brown eyes—come into focus. They’re wide and he can imagine what Eddie’s thinking, because part of him is thinking that too—_is this it? Is this it? Now that we’re free, is this it?_

And he drops his jaw, fills his mouth with water, and squirts it in Eddie’s face.

Eddie’s shriek echoes across the quarry and is followed up by _“I’m going to fucking kill you, Richie!”_

The Losers have a sleepover at the Derry Townhouse.

Eddie will, as a point of order, probably never be able to sleep alone in a hotel ever again, or brush his teeth without wondering if Henry Bowers is about to appear out of friggin' nowhere and stab him in the face. Going to sleep in his room in the Derry Townhouse is out of the question.

Unfortunately, there’s literally nowhere else to stay in Derry. Mike’s apartment over the library is still a crime scene, so he’s out of luck, and Eddie’s mom is dead and her house sold as part of the estate disposal years ago. And he’s exhausted, he’s just out of the emergency room getting his stab wound sterilized and talking to the police about the hole in his face, and Mike and Richie are down at the station. Ben, Bill, Bev, and Eddie arrive back at the Derry Townhouse in the wee hours of the morning.

Eddie has a long claustrophobic moment of staring at the stairwell and imagining actually going into his room and closing the door and being alone with the dark, before Bev yawns and asks, “Why don’t we all stay in my room?”

Ben looks at her and his eyebrows lift slightly, but he says nothing.

“Like we’re kids,” Bev elaborates. “Wait for Mike and Richie to come back, and if we wake up we’ll know that this actually happened.”

Bev’s once-white shirt is now pale rust with blood, and Eddie has a big gauze patch taped to his face. He doubts that he’ll have trouble remembering. But he knows how frequently he woke up in the night in a cold sweat, after the first time they defeated It, and all the nightmares he had where it was creeping into his house and had taken his mother—the pharmacy basement reenacted in her bedroom, in the living room, in the kitchen.

Two things are inevitable: they’re going to fall asleep at some point, and their sleep is probably going to be fucked, psychologically.

He becomes aware that all three of them—Bev, Bill, and Ben are looking at him. He’s the deciding vote.

Immediately he feels himself bristle—he lanced It, didn’t he? He’s hardly the weakest out of the club anymore. He choked that leper out with his bare hands—and he looks at Bill, opening his mouth to give him a piece of his mind. Then Bill’s blue eyes widen slightly, and his gaze flicks not to Bev but to Ben, and his lips press into a flat line.

_Oh._ It has to be Eddie, because Bill can’t decide for everyone who’s going to sleep in Bev’s room with her.

“Okay, but if I wake up and see someone standing in the bathroom with the light out, I’m probably gonna stab first and ask questions later.”

Richie would have something to say in response to that, Eddie’s certain, and his absence is thrown into stark relief in the blue lobby.

“Expect nothing less,” Bill says, and claps Eddie on the shoulder.

Ben looks amused. “As long as we’re quiet I doubt there will be a problem with that. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m asleep on my feet.” He glances toward the desk. “Does anyone actually work here?”

After a quick negotiation they determine there’s going to be no hauling mattresses between floors tonight, so they’d better bring the bedding from their rooms and make a nest. Bill follows Eddie around—giving Ben and Bev the minimal privacy the very exhausted need—and they strip the bed and throw the pillows and sheets into the duvet, which Eddie then twists up gingerly to make a big pouch and slings over his back in some massively oversized bindle.

“The outsides of hotel duvets are so unsanitary,” he gripes, more out of habit than of genuine distaste. “If I came in here with a blacklight, reported what I found, I bet there would be no hotels in Derry. Ugh.”

“If you want to try sleeping on the floor without the extra cushioning, good luck,” says Bill.

Eddie turns all the way around in the stairwell and looks up at Bill, half a landing behind him and dragging his own bedding bindle.

He points at the gauze patch on his face. “You think I’m sleeping on the floor? I got stabbed today, Big Bill, good luck with _that_.”

Richie hates the Derry police.

He wasn’t that big on them in general—a lot of child murder happened under their apathetic noses, and that’s kind of step one for cops, you know, stop all the child murder. Richie kind of feels like he’s been doing their job for the last thirty years or so—first with stopping the child murder and then with stopping Henry Bowers from murdering Mike.

Turns out, they’re very interested in Mike.

Richie doesn’t notice it, at first, because he’s definitely reliving walking into the Derry Public Library, seeing Mike getting murdered, and then thunking an axe into the back of Bowers’s skull. And then he’s trying not to puke into a police station trash can. And he’s very aware that, after he killed a guy, he and five of his closest living friends whom he hasn’t seen in thirty years all went into the sewer and can’t account for their whereabouts for several hours. Also, when he got into town, the waitress at Jade of the Orient watched Mike hitting the dining table with a chair and screaming. So this is not good. Even barring Derry Police usual negligence and the haze that It had over the whole town, this is not good.

But the cops keep pushing cups of coffee at him (though he’d really prefer tequila) and asking gently for him to walk them through it over and over again. And what was Mike doing when he came into the library?

He was on his back, trying to dodge getting stabbed.

But what did Richie _see_?

And eventually Richie loses his patience and says that he saw Mike’s legs, that he saw Bowers hunched on top of Mike, and he saw the knife, and he saw Mike trying to shove Bowers off.

But how did Richie know that was what Mike was trying to do?

“Because Bowers had a knife, and Mike’s hands were on Bowers’ chest like this—” He puts his hands flat over his own pecs and shoves in demonstration. “—and because that’s what you do when someone is trying to stab you.”

And what did Richie do?

“I picked up the nearest thing, and I hit Bowers.”

And what was that thing?

“Turns out it was an axe.”

Turns out?

“Yeah, there was all this broken glass all over the floor, and the library displays were tossed, so I grabbed one, and it was an axe.”

He didn’t look before he grabbed it?

“I mean, I like to think I wouldn’t have picked up a pillow. I picked it up, it was heavy, I hit Bowers with it.” The more he says it, the less nauseating it’s getting and the more irritating.

“So you hit Bowers to protect your friend,” the cop says.

“To stop him stabbing Mike, yes.”

“Why was Bowers trying to stab Mike?”

“Because he’s a racist escaped mental patient and he tried to kill Mike thirty years ago? And failed, and he stabbed my friend Eddie in the face, and then he went off to kill Mike.”

“Listen, listen, Mr. Tozier,” the cop says. “You can account for the blow to Mr. Bowers’s head. Mr. Bowers also had a stab wound to the abdomen from the knife he was found with. How do you know that Mr. Bowers was the assailant?”

“…Because of everything about Bowers?”

And so forth.

He calls his agent and gets a vicious screed in his ear, but he also gets bail posted for himself and Mike. He is instructed not to leave the state of Maine—great. He and Mike drive back to the Derry Townhouse.

Mike sits in the passenger seat with his fingers draped over his eyes.

“They always racist fucks?” Richie asks.

“Yeah.” Mike doesn’t say much more than that, so Richie doesn't ask.

Richie has every intention of walking into the Derry Townhouse, banging on Eddie’s door, and announcing _Guess who posted bail?_ But no one answers the door.

Richie hits his palm against the door a couple more times and says, “Eds?” And then he tries the doorknob, because he’s slow but he gets there eventually.

The door is unlocked. He looks in and the room is empty. The bed’s even stripped.

He stares at it for several moments, and then he turns and runs back downstairs to his room, where Mike is sprawled out fully dressed and with his eyes shut on the bed. The only concession he’s made is to taking off his shoes.

“Eddie’s gone,” he says to Mike.

Mike jerks his head as his eyes open and he looks blearily at Richie. “What?”

“Gone,” Richie says. “Bed’s stripped, like he left and housekeeping—does this place even have housekeeping?”

Mike blinks at him. Richie stands there staring at him, waiting for some more response, and then realizes Mike is operating on a delay Richie’s nervous energy can’t wait for. He bolts for the stairs again and storms down them with all the grace of a drunk chihuaua, no conscious thought in his head aside from _Eddie?_ and _Bev_.

He knocks on that door. “Bev? You in there? Hellooooo?”

Someone moves inside and part of Richie relaxes—god, what if they’d all vanished while he and Mike were at the station? As the door turns Mike comes slowly down the stairs to join him.

Bill opens the door.

Richie stares at him, counting the number of flights of stairs he went down and making _sure this is Bev's room_ before he says, “Man, if you were gonna do that, could you have waited until—”

“Shut the fuck up, Trashmouth,” Eddie says from inside the room.

Oh. “Oh, it’s not a threesome!” Richie says, because what he almost said was _Oh, it’s not an affair._

Bill rolls his eyes and opens the door wider. “Come on in. Sleepover, high school rules.” There’s a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor in front of the bed that make it clear where he was sleeping.

Eddie is curled toward the door with both arms wrapped around himself, his gauzed cheek up toward the ceiling. Behind him, Bev’s hair is visible on the sheets, and one of her arms is slung over Eddie’s ribs.

Richie halts in the doorway so that Mike collides with his shoulder. “Not the threesome I was expecting,” he corrects himself. “Damn, Kaspbrak.”

“I will rip your tongue out,” Eddie mumbles without opening his eyes.

Ben’s head appears behind Beverly—he’s laying on the floor on the far side of the bed, away from the door. His hair is flattened on one side and sticking up like a cockatiel’s on the other. It is—weirdly—a good look, because those are basically the only looks Ben has now.

“Oh, okay, sleepover rules,” Richie says, and then throws himself onto the bed.

Bev and Eddie both groan, twisting away from him. Because he can get away with it, he worms his way in the middle of both of them and wraps both arms around Eddie. “Where’s the duvet?” he asks.

“Have it,” Ben mumbles, his voice all gravel and sleep and _Jesus_. “Everything okay?”

“Posted bail,” he says. “Mike and I are both forbidden from leaving the state of Maine for investigation into second-degree murder!” He puts his face in Eddie’s shoulders. “You too, Spaghetti. Cops are gonna want to talk to you next.”

“I _said_, shut _up_,” Eddie growls, but leans back into Richie’s chest. He’s little and warm and _god_ Richie is so tired, he’s just gonna let himself have this, he can’t stop himself even for self-preservation.

Bev sighs and then also spoons Richie, which is unexpected but not unpleasant.

“There we go,” Richie says. “Haystack, you wanna get in on this? Are you and your muscles cold down there?”

“I’m cold,” Bill grumbles.

“I’ll help you. I could fall asleep on broken glass right now,” Mike says, and closes the door and lays down on top of Bill’s pallet like Snoopy on top of the doghouse.

“You’re a good man, Mikey,” Bill says.

“All right, all right,” Richie says. “You sure, Haystack? Going once, going—”

Bev puts her hand over his mouth and whispers, “Shhh,” in his ear. “Beep beep.”

“I’m all right,” Ben says, and Richie hears the shuffle of him lying down.

_Suit yourself_, Richie thinks but does not say. Eddie and Bev were clearly asleep when he came crashing in, and the back of Eddie’s shirt still smells like old dirt and quarry water, but they’re not going to move right now.

Stan should be here, he thinks dimly, and then the next thing he knows Eddie is saying, “God, what are you, a fucking octopus? Get off me.”

Richie flinches back so hard that he feels Bev’s nose collide with his shoulder and he goes totally still.

“Shit, Richie,” Bev says.

He tries to half-sit up, looking around his back to see if he just managed to break Bev’s nose. “Aw, fuck, you okay, Molly Ringwald?”

“Yeah, just sit still.” She elbows him down.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, pulling out the Buford Kissdrivel straight-up Kentucky Fried voice, and lays back down.

Eddie is sliding out of bed, muttering, “Gotta call home.” Richie watches the sway of his shoulders as he carefully positions his feet—probably to avoid stepping on Mike and Bill—and then he’s getting up. “And—” His hand scratches at his hair. “Take a shower.”

Richie closes his eyes against the pang in his gut that says _Don’t go_, but Bev’s fingers are making a fist in the back of his shirt and he falls back asleep.

Eddie drives into Bangor with Ben to buy a new phone.

Going swimming first in a demon clown’s lair in a sewer and then in a quarry means that everyone’s phone is water-damaged, except for Mike’s because of his indestructible Otter-Box, and Bev’s is coated with blood, and Richie’s is smashed from where he dropped after the deadlights, and Eddie’s screen cracked during the car accident but now if he pushes down on the shards he can see water moving around over and in the liquid crystal.

Eddie thought about getting an Otter Box the first time he bought a smart phone, just in case, but the only colors still left at the store were camo-print and electric pink, both of which would have given _the wrong impression_, and he instead just was very careful with his phone. Just like he was very careful with his driving, and his job, and this last week has been probably the second worst of his whole life.

After the sleepover (after Eddie _shared a bed with someone who was not his wife_) he and Bill took turns calling their wives on the landline in the Derry Townhouse—did the clown run the Townhouse? Legally, have the five of them basically bought out the Derry Townhouse at this point? Eddie went second, because he was hoping Bill would go back up to his room and get cleaned up and not hear what was about to pass with Myra, but no such luck. Bill instead went over to the bar—which they’ve basically cleaned out by now—and silently mimed, _You mind_? while Eddie dialed Myra’s cell.

And Eddie couldn’t say _Yes I mind_, so instead he shook his head and mimed back for Bill to pour him a glass too.

Myra was, predictably, incoherent on the phone. Eddie was very clear when he went to the emergency room that no one was to call his wife, that she was in New York and hearing about this would just upset her, but the long days of silence didn’t do anything to calm her down. Eddie ended up plugging one ear with a fingertip and saying, “Myra, Myra, I was in an accident. I was in a little bit of an accident, and now I’ve got to stay in town for a while, okay? I’ve got to stay.”

“—_another_ accident, after twenty-four years of driving, Eddie, why are you lying to me? Where are you? Either you’re hurt and you need me to come take care of you or you’re lying and you don’t want me to see what you’re doing, so tell me where you are, Eddie, tell me right now—”

“I love you, Myra, I have to go,” Eddie said, and slammeds the phone down. He was panting slightly—throwing that phone back on the hook felt like throwing the lance at It, and his heart was racing again—and he knew he was blushing.

Bill just got up and thunked the whiskey down in front of him.

Eddie has never drank so much in his life. He swallowed it in two gulps and set the glass back down.

“Another?” Bill asked.

“Nah,” Eddie said, aware that his head was swimming.

Bill shrugged and took the glass back. “Ben said something about a trick with a lemon and a bottle of whiskey, we oughta ask him about that later.”

And then Eddie reported to the police station and gave his statement and signed some papers authorizing them to review his medical records—his long, long medical records (_longer than my wang_, a thirteen-year-old Richie chirps in the back of his head)—regarding the injury, and he gives his statement, and the police cordoned off his room in the Derry Townhouse. Eddie was asked not to leave the state of Maine pending further investigation into Henry Bowers’s death, but when Ben said, “I’m going to Bangor to get a new phone, my assistant needs to be able to get a hold of me,” he tagged along for the ride.

Eddie tries to pay for his phone. The salesperson at the Verizon store comes back and says, apologetically, “We’re sorry, sir, but the card was declined. Can you tell us what ZIP code the card is associated with?”

He gives them the ZIP code, a rising tide of _she didn’t, she didn’t_ happening in his chest, but he only gives Ben a shaky smile.

Ben seems immune to the awkwardness that even Bill felt when he heard Eddie talking to Myra, and when the salesperson comes back again and asks if there’s another card—of course there’s no other card, Eddie doesn’t have credit cards, Myra has the credit cards and Eddie pays them off religiously once a month so they have robust credit—Ben says, “Just add it to my tab” and hands the woman a black card.

“You don’t have to do that,” Eddie says quickly, as soon as the salesperson is out of earshot. “It’s just a mistake—I left town pretty quickly, and you know how banks get when you don’t tell them you’re going somewhere, they freeze your cards—” Even though he knows that’s not it, knows he had no trouble booking his reservation at the Derry Townhouse that he’s now running up like he’s running up the bar bill. He knows, he knows.

Ben shrugs, studying an arrangement of prepaid cell-phones. “Pay me back once you’ve called your bank,” he says. “Bev asked for a prepaid—do you want one?”

“No, no,” Eddie says. “I only need the one, I have the number.”

The salesperson comes back with his new phone and accepts his sodden shattered one for their recycling with only a slight look of shock. At least there’s no blood, unlike Bev’s, which Eddie saw and promptly closed in a plastic bag from the drugstore because it’s a biohazard.

“What happened here?”

“Geocaching accident,” Ben replies without looking up, because he looks like the kind of guy who has time to spend and his beard and cowboy boots suggest he might as well geocache. Eddie, on the other hand, looks like a default character in a game about middle management, and only smiles weakly at the salesperson. “My fault,” Ben goes on. He sets down a series of cards on the counter. “Can I get five of these temporary phones, please?”

“Five?” the salesperson repeats.

“Big geocaching accident,” Ben says seriously. “Remember, always print out your directions before you go.” He shakes his head. “Can’t count on the GPS when there’s no service.”

Which is sufficient provocation to cause the salesperson to launch into a pitch for their 5G network—as if Eddie has no idea about the lack of service in rural Maine—and serves as a distraction while Eddie’s face cools and his heartrate slows.

Richie calls his agent.

On his new phone, not on the line in the police station. Back when Richie used to go out into L.A. with every intention of getting fucked up he used to write Steve’s number on the back of whatever business card he had to hand and stuff it in his wallet. He considers telling Ben about that sometime, and asking if he expected Bev to come bail him out if he got caught snorting coke off a blueprint or whatever it is architects do to get fucked up.

_Beep beep, Richie_, he tells himself, a high-pitched little voice coming up from somewhere deep in his lizard brain. Where the memories come from._ Beep fuckin’ beep._

He gets Steve on the phone—his new prepaid phone, thank you, Ben—and Steve’s voice says, “Who is this?”

“J.F.K.,” Richie replies. “Ah hope yah can vote for us in Novembah.”

There is a moment of silence and then Steve says, “Jesus fucking Christ, Rich!”

“Oh, you caught me,” Richie says dully. Behind him, the radio in the Townhouse bar drools out early 2000s alternative pop.

“You have a nervous breakdown, huh, Rich? You have a midlife crisis, Rich? You have a fucking aneurysm, Rich?”

Richie draws in a deep breath and recites the story Bill and Mike laid out for them.

“My friend Stan killed himself, Steve.”

Steve is quiet for a moment. Then he asks, “Well, why didn’t you just fucking say that, huh, Tozier? Can’t get out a few words before you go on stage and then you flub your whole act? Who the fuck is Stan? I’ve never heard of Stan before.”

“My best friend from when I was a kid,” Richie says. “I went to his bar mitzvah. He said ‘fuck’ in front of the whole synagogue and then did a mic drop. You shoulda represented him, he’s got—_had_ more funny in his armpit than I do in my whole body.” He leans back in the chair and tries to put his feet on the coffee table, but it’s too far away and his feet land limply on the floor. A joke dying right under him.

The radio whines, _there’s a pretty young thing in front of you, and she’s really pretty and she’s real into you, and then she’s sleepin’ beside you._ The words land in Richie’s stomach like coins into a fountain and he turns slowly to look at it—is this like the kid in the Jade of the Orient? Just his own paranoia reaching up out of his throat and making him scream _I’m not afraid of you!_ at a fourth-grader?

“Shit, Rich,” Steve says. “You found out right before you went on?”

“Yep,” he says, popping the p. He imagines chewing gum, imagines blowing a big pink bubble coming out of his mouth and bursting over his face. Then in his mind’s eye the bubblegum turns red, into a balloon. He sits up and stares rigidly at the window.

“So what, you been at the funeral and you just happened to _murder a guy?_ You’re fucking lucky I picked up, getting calls from _Derry Police _in _Maine_, Jesus, are you sure that’s even a real place?”

“Nah, Stan died in Georgia. I mean, he died in the bath,” he corrects himself, because he knows how those details shove up barriers between himself and Steve and he needs them right now. “But like, the bath was in Georgia. But Maine is where we all grew up, the seven of us, so we came back for like a memorial thing, a _shoulda woulda coulda_—his name was Uris, but we called him _Stan Urine_, is there anything there? Is that anything? Never mind.”

“Yeah, and the murder charges, Rich, the murder charges.”

“Well, while we were here, a serial killer escaped from a local mental institution and tried to murder my friends Eddie and Mike, so I hit him with an axe and he died.”

Steve is absolutely silent.

“Because that’s what happens when you hit people with axes, I guess,” Richie goes on into the phone. “They bite it. The dust, I mean, not the axe, but—”

“Fuck you, Tozier, you fucking fuck, do you know what I’ve been doing since you up and disappeared?”

“I swear to God, Steve, just Google it. His name was Henry Bowers. He used to—” Richie finds himself giggling. “He used to beat the shit out of me when I was a kid, and when I was thirteen he went to jail for murdering his dad, and just happened that while we were here memorializing my late great pal Stanley Urine, and he stabbed my friend Eddie in the face, and then he tried to stab my friend Mike—probably not in the face, I don’t know where he wanted to stab Mike—but then I hit him with an axe. So, like, I need a lawyer.”

Steve is silent for several moments and then he says, “Jesus fucking Christ, Rich.”

“Are you Googling it?”

“If you’re fucking with me, you better lose my fucking number, you better get a new fucking agent, what the _fuck_—” Steve is quiet again, and then mutters, “_Bangor Daily News_.” He falls silent.

Richie resists the urge to whistle the _Jeopardy_ theme.

“What the _fuck_, Rich?” Steve says yet again.

“You find it?”

“Yeah, what the fuck? Is this a real place?”

“Real as my—" He interrupts himself. "Yeah, it’s real.”

“Rich, _what._ You never mentioned growing up in …in the _Twilight Zone_, man!”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I don’t write my own shit,” Richie says. “So, like, I don’t know how you wanna spin this, but I’m gonna be in Maine for a while, maybe in jail, I don’t know, and I’d like a lawyer, please, because I was already a fucking moron and I told the police exactly what happened.”

“You—what—_Richie_.”

“Yeah, so. I mean, thanks for wiring my bail, but we both know how I’ll do in prison.”

“I—I don’t have criminal lawyers in my fucking Rolodex, Richie!”

“You have a Rolodex?” Richie asks.

“It’s a metaphor!” Steve snaps. Richie imagines him pinching the bridge of his nose. Usually Steve’s pretty supportive, even when Richard’s not funny at all (_Not Scary at All!_), but now he’s… treating Richie like Richie deserves to be treated. “Okay, okay,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do and I’ll call you back—should I call this number? What did you do to your phone?”

“A clown dropped me seven feet and I smashed it.”

“_Fuck_ you, I’ll call you back, _don’t_ call anyone else, don’t _talk _to anyone else, I need to get NDAs in line, don’t call even your _goddamn mother_.”

“Well she’s dead, and that’s a little more effort than I currently feel like expending.”

“Fucking _bye_, Rich,” Steve says, and hangs up.

Richie folds his prepaid flip phone (it’s so 2008, he’s so two-thousand-and-late) and lets his legs drag him out of the chair and onto the floor.

The radio—which is either playing a really long song or a full album by the same artist—tells him that he’s not happy but he’s funny.

“You fuckin’ sure, Rilo Kiley?” he mutters, having at last identified the singer. He doesn’t know why he knows that. Out of all the things he’s forgotten in his life (_Eddie_. _Being gay._ _Killing a fucking clown._) he remembers that.

In the silence and the reedy folk-pop coming out of the radio, he tries to calm himself down. He feels his spine sinking into the carpet. He has another half-instinct to check on Eddie, but Eddie’s been making phone calls lately and whenever he glances at the caller ID on his new phone he loses all color and leaves the room. “Booty call, Eds?” Richie shouted as he was going this last time. Eddie just closed the door on him.

Not that sleeping in a puppy pile with all of his middle school friends isn’t great—and it’s probably something he’s gonna say when he gets back to L.A., all _sorry, I spent a week in bed with two brunettes and two redheads and that’s not even why I went to jail_—but he’s old and his back is killing him. Laying on the floor is supposed to be good for that, right? He gives up and inclines his head until his neck is no longer snagged on the seat of the chair, and then he thunks to the ground entirely. He can feel his shoulderblades trying to take his weight, his spine trying to realign. Maybe he should take up fucking yoga. If he gets good at it, maybe he’ll learn how to suck his own dick and that’ll be a real time-saver.

He gets to be old. Everyone gets to be old, except Stan.

He doesn’t know how long he lays there, thinking about that—about going back to L.A., about how much pain he’s in, about everyone upstairs, about anything and everything except what he saw in the deadlights—before the radio informs him, _I had one friend in high school. Recently, he hung himself with string._

Actually, Mike had the right idea.

When Bev comes downstairs, she finds Richie beating the radio to death with the fancy chair.

As soon as he sees her on the stairs he tries to set the chair down, and in the absence of the adrenaline he used to lift it in the first place—damn heirloom furniture or whatever this is—something in his lower back wrenches. He puts a hand on it and straightens up as best he can, bracing himself on the back of the chair, and meets her gaze.

Bev’s mouth is slightly ajar and her eyes are wide, but she says nothing.

Richie says, “We’re gonna just have to buy this fucking hotel, aren’t we?”

And then the chair breaks under him.

Bev drives Richie to the E.R.

“Threw his back out,” Bev says calmly as she collects Richie’s keys from the nightstand of their shared room. “They’ll get him some muscle relaxers or something and we’ll be back. Ben, honey, can you clean up the bits of chair in the lobby before someone sees?”

“Who?” Ben asks, because no one works at this damn hotel.

“Whaddayamean, ‘bits of chair’?” Eddie asks, because that’s more to the point.

“Richie murdered the radio with it,” Bev replies.

Mike asks, “Did he hear something?”

They all know what he means by that—a very specific something, but no one names It.

“If he did, I don’t know. He just said he doesn’t like Rilo Kiley.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ben says. “What else can we do to this hotel? Bill, you wanna, like, drive Mike’s car through the lobby, just to finish making our mark on our new clubhouse?”

“Maybe later,” Bill says. He looks grim.

Bev leaves and Ben goes downstairs, either to help with the chair or to haul Richie out to the car. Eddie remembers belatedly that he has muscle relaxers in his suitcase—he has literally everything in his suitcase—but he tries to imagine himself running downstairs and pressing the pills into Richie’s hand, and his throat just closes up. He finds himself about to retch.

Bill says quietly, “So I have to go home soon.”

Mike and Eddie both look at him. The distraction helps with the constriction in the back of Eddie’s throat. He says nothing.

“Because I think the staff writers just took over the movie, and I think my wife will leave me if I don’t get my ass back home eventually—or worse, she’ll show up here, and I can’t…” He sighs. “I can’t have Audra here.”

Eddie gets that. He didn’t tell Myra where he was going, but he still imagines her tracking his phone—despite the _find my iPhone_ setting being carefully switched off within moments of the salesperson putting the phone in his hand at the store—and barging into the Derry Townhouse and going up the hotel floor by floor, banging on doors and calling, _“Eddie? Eddie-Bear?”_

Bill’s marriage isn’t like Eddie’s, though. There’s regret on Bill’s face, but not dread. Eddie imagines he sees what he himself feels about having to call his old place of work and explain his sabbatical—the last thing he told them was that he was unexpectedly in the hospital and unsure about when he’d be able to come back to work.

His sick days—carefully reserved despite Myra’s best coaxing, even that year that Eddie had Flu B so bad he was coughing up blood—will run out eventually and he’ll have to come up with a better explanation. _Material witness to axe-murder_ is a phrase he never thought he’d have to say to his boss. Or anyone, really. He was afraid of a lot of things, but for some reason axe murder seemed so much less risky than, say, sepsis.

And that was before he got stabbed in the face.

“You coming back for the trial?” Mike asks.

Bill’s not a suspect and so he’s permitted to leave the state. For a while Eddie wondered if the prosecution was going to go with the angle that they all got together and decided to murder an escaped mental patient as like a thirty-year high-school reunion kinda thing, but the fact that Bill, Bev, Ben, and Richie are all famous might hold off those conspiracy theories. Those uncomfortably _close-but-no-cigar_ conspiracy theories.

They arrested the guys who gay-bashed those guys and pushed the one over the side of the kissing bridge. Bowers’s escape coincides close enough with the missing kids—that one from the Jade of the Orient and a little girl, whose bodies still haven’t been found—and matches ‘his old M.O.’ closely enough that at least they’re not suspects for what It did.

_Comedian saves local librarian from escaped serial killer_ goes down a lot smoother than _Bestselling author, fashion designer, international architect, and comedian suspects in child disappearances_.

“Of course I’m coming back,” Bill says. Even if they don’t call him as a witness—he saw neither the attack on Eddie nor the attack on Mike—Eddie can picture Bill, grave and with his thinning red hair combed carefully instead of pushed out of his face, sitting in the pews. Moral support for the defense.

“If you remember,” Mike says gravely.

“You better call me before it happens,” Bill says. “Don’t let me walk away and forget.”

“Okay,” Mike says, but he sighs through his nose as he says it. Mike has spent his whole life in Derry, if it can be called a life. Eddie can already feel how he’s itching to get out.

As the other married man in the group, Eddie feels like he’d better respond to this—Bill, good husband, going back home to his wife who’s a famous and beautiful actress, and maybe they’ll have a passel of redheaded artsy kids now that It’s influence is gone. Or maybe like memory the sterility is something just wrought on their bodies. Maybe it can’t be reversed.

Eddie imagines a child—looking like himself at eleven—standing before him in the room. Myra’s child, but as strongly Eddie as Eddie matched the pictures of his father that his mother kept in the house.

No, he tells himself. He’ll never let that happen. Never get Myra pregnant, for one, but also never let her raise a child. Not in that house. Not anywhere outside of it, either.

Bill is watching Eddie. “You good, man?”

Eddie can’t speak of how he’s been ignoring the voicemails Myra leaves on his new phone, how the inbox filled up within forty-eight hours of him calling her from it. He can’t speak, either, of how he almost wishes he’d taken Ben’s offer and bought a prepaid cell phone with a number she doesn’t know. She’s his wife, he agreed to stand with her _in sickness and in health_ and there’s some kind of sickness at work, all right, and he shouldn’t be screening her calls. But he is.

“Fine,” he tells Bill, and there’s no judgement in Bill’s blue eyes.

Richie comes back hours later standing upright and making his way up the stairs slowly, arm slung around Bev’s shoulder. When he comes into the room he holds his arms up and says, “Hey!” with a definitely high grin at them all.

“Hey, man!” Mike replies. “How you feeling?”

“Better! Loads better.” He lays down on the bed and grins at Eddie, who is sitting in the corner at the desk and turning his new phone over and over again in his head. “_Eddie-spaghetti, sitting at the desk_,” he singsongs.

Eddie stares at him. “Go on, Richie. What rhymes with ‘desk’?”

Richie flops back on the pillow with his face turned toward the ceiling. After several long moments he says, triumphantly, “_Bresk_!”

Ben stares at Richie and says quietly, “I’ll have what he’s having.”

“Was that… was that supposed to be ‘breast,’ Richie?” Bev asks, incredulously.

Richie doesn’t respond. It becomes clear moments later that if he’s not asleep, he’s pretty close to it.

Bill says, “I’ll pay off the bar tab when I go.”

Bev raises her eyebrows. “You’re going?”

“Soon,” he says. “I bet I got fired from my screenwriting gig, but my wife misses me.”

“Your wife,” Bev repeats. “The actress. Audrey?”

“Audra,” Bill replies. “Audra Phillips. Too good for me by half, you know how it is.”

Eddie looks from Bev, who is still staring contemplatively at Richie, to Ben, who is sitting at the foot of the bed with his feet propped on the bedstead, looking unconcerned by either Richie behind him or the odd tension between Bev and Bill.

“Maybe I do, now,” Bev says quietly. She looks over at Ben and gives a dreamy half-smile.

“Never,” Ben replies, and leans back on the bed. He elbows Richie in the knee. “Hey, Rich. Rich.” There is no response. “Trashmouth.”

Richie turns his head. There is a pause and then he says, “Haystack!” and sounds delighted. “You got hot. What’re you doing in bed with _me_?”

“You climbed in with me,” Ben says. He reaches up and pulls Richie’s glasses off his face, carefully folding them and leaning across him to put them down on the nightstand.

Something in Eddie’s gut pulls. Ben doesn’t mean anything by it, and they’re all living in each other’s pockets. It should be annoying by now, but something about this shared room—even trying to cram six people in one hotel room with one toilet—feels just like the clubhouse back in the day. But there’s no hammock for Eddie to climb in and demand his turn and shove his feet in Richie’s face and now Ben is politely taking off Richie’s glasses so he doesn’t fall asleep in them. Just being friendly. When Ben sets the glasses down and draws back Richie’s eyes look curiously exposed minus the big black frames. He stares at Ben.

Then he throws his head back as best he can while supine and starts laughing. “Not fucking fair, Haystack. You got, like, a company, too—you oughta be selling, like, watches, or cologne, man. I mean _advertisements_. Did you see that Brad Pitt one years ago? He just goes on and says _I am very attractive_ and then they show the name of the cologne. That’s what you should be doing. Bev—” He looks around for Beverly and doesn’t seem to find her, giving up. Raising his voice he says, “Bev, tell your man here he ought to be selling cologne.”

The corners of Bev’s mouth quirk up in a restrained grin. “You ought to be selling cologne,” she tells Ben calmly.

“That’s what I hear.” Ben returns to his casual crouch on the end of the hotel bed. “I oughta be selling salad mixes, if anything. I’ve been eating like garbage and drinking too much, damn.”

“Yeah, I’ll pay the bar tab,” Bill repeats. “And for the chair and the radio, thanks so much, Richie.”

“You’re w-w-welcome, B-big Bill,” Richie replies.

“Beep beep, Richie,” Bill says, but he’s smiling.

Richie is arraigned.

He didn’t bring a suit to Derry—why would he bring a suit to Derry?—so he went downtown to the Freese’s department store. Even before he laid hands on the door he felt himself starting to shake, felt nausea creeping up the back of his throat, so he turned around, went back to the Townhouse, picked up Bev, and drove into Bangor. There they went to a Macy’s in a mall and she just threw clothes at him. He tried on the suit she selected for him, she sighed, and then she bought a sewing kit and began adjusting it herself.

“You don’t have to do that, Bev,” he said.

“I need something to distract me,” she replied. “Been a while since I did my own alterations.” She and Ben are witnesses to Bowers’s assault on Eddie, and Ben saw him running away, but Richie’s aware that she doesn’t need to be here in the way that he, Mike, and Eddie need to. But Bev’s never made any noise about going back to Chicago, or her husband. Richie’s not stupid—he saw the bruises on her forearms, so he doesn’t ask her about Mr. Beverly Marsh, but he does look at her white arms and feel—not what he felt about Bowers, not quite, but _jeez_, some man out there laying hands on _Bev Marsh_?

“Well then, by all means, make it work,” he said in his best Tim Gunn, and let her adjust his suit. It turns out to be the best fitting item of clothing in his whole damn wardrobe—_you grow into your looks, _indeed. He grew into _something_.

His lawyer grew up local over in Castle Rock, but he’s flying in from Florida. He doesn’t know how Steve got him. At one point he asks Deaver if he knows Stanley Uris, because his brain confuses Florida and Georgia.

“No. Sit down,” Deaver tells him.

He sits down and manages to say only what Deaver tells him to say for the duration of his court session. Will wonders never cease?

When he gets out, Bill has left a message in the group text. _Still remember all of you. Good luck, Richie._

Richie wants to text back something like _Don’t need luck, it’s all in the dashing good looks,_ but all he can think of is prayer. He scrolls through a few screens of emojis on the stupid flip phone—he’s got to get a real phone again at some point, he’s been spoiled—to send the perfect absurdist combination, or maybe an eggplant and a series of squirting droplets, but he settles only on the turtle.

Eddie gets a call from someone not his wife, for once. He’s taken to going through and emptying out his voicemail box at the end of the day—what if someone actually needs to talk to him, and not at him?—but as he’s scrolling through he sees that while he was on silent someone not Myra called him. Not work, either, and not the automated voice of the Penobscot County Judicial Court informing him to be ready to appear to a summons.

Instead, it’s a phone call from a personal injury attorney in Queens. The voicemail, no doubt left by some polite receptionist, asks Mr. Kaspbrak to apologize but that he won’t be able to file charges until his auto insurance has finished processing his claim for the accident.

Stupidly, Eddie thinks, _What accident?_, because his time in Derry post-It has been eclipsed by the hole in his face. Then he remembers that he wrecked his car for the first and only time in his life.

And Myra’s on his insurance. She never drives anywhere, but marriage is one of the things that improves your insurance rates, and it just made sense to put her on, and some companies require it anyway, and...

Eddie spends a few panicky movements Googling_ can I sue on behalf of someone else New York_ and finds out, to his relief, that in the state of New York only parents and guardians can sue on behalf of their children. Wives cannot sue on behalf of their husbands. He’s disturbed that the attorney called him about it, as if he were there in person, when he can imagine Myra calling and bemoaning what happened. A smart attorney would put her off, right, no matter what she told them? Eddie isn’t in New York, isn’t going to look for an attorney, and he was at fault for the accident.

He takes a few deep breaths and almost calls the insurance company to tell them not to talk to his wife about the accident or their investigation into it, but what will that do? It’s late, anyway.

He’s on the floor now that Richie gets the bed because he threw his back out (ha!) and for some reason Richie insisting that they could still spoon if he wanted to put him off sharing (asshole). He should do what Bill did—he should go home, and he should wait to be called to testify in Richie’s trial, and in the meantime he should sort out this thing with the car insurance and…

…and with Myra. Because he doesn’t know exactly what is happening in his marriage—its terms so clearly laid out when he agreed to them, but Eddie has literally never _with his body, worshipped_ a person. What does that mean?

His brain has a lot of—not clear visions of what that would look like, but a lot of nerve impulses and phantom feelings getting at the gist.

Eddie swallows in his nest under the desk and thinks, _I have to go home, I have to go home_, but he hears nasal breathing from the bed and the way Bev sighs slightly in her sleep, and there’s the faint glow of Mike’s e-reader in the corner, and Ben and Bev fell asleep holding hands again so Ben is still reaching out toward the bed and—Eddie doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go back. He’s been here for how long? And he hasn’t missed her at all—felt that he needed her, maybe, in panicky moments like walking by the old baseball diamond, like he needed to apply a wife to the situation to get the bad thoughts out of his head, but Myra comes with her own bad thoughts.

_Myra is a bad thought_, he thinks unkindly, and then excoriates himself for it.

But he sees what she’s trying to do. He’s not picking up her calls, so she’s trying to compel him back to New York for a court case. If Eddie gave her any details beyond _I’m a material witness_ she’d be investigating the court, the charges, anything about it. He still has stress dreams of her kicking in the door to the room—now more _their_ room than Bev’s room—and wailing _Eddie!_

Bill still texts every day to say he remembers them, and Richie keeps responding with increasingly esoteric strings of emojis, and Mike is steadily making his way through all of the William Denbrough horror novels and saying things like _I didn’t think the ending was that bad, actually_, and Ben sends pictures of them all together with captions like _We haven’t forgotten you either_, and Bev sends pictures without any captions at all. Mike up late and illuminated by the bedside lamp, Ben absently constructing some kind of hut out of toothpicks, Richie trying on suits before his court appearances. Richie pulling suit jackets on and off. Richie unbuttoning his sleeves and messing up his hair and pulling a face at the camera.

_Fuck_, Eddie thinks, and closes his phone and lays there in the dark. He has to do something. He has to do something.

Richie stops taking muscle relaxers.

Ben offers to help him with PT to strengthen his back muscles. His face is carefully bland as he does it, which is how Richie knows Ben’s fucking with him.

“Haystack Calhoun gets off a good one!” he howls, thumping Ben on the shoulder with a fist. “Did you hear that, everybody, Haystack—ow, it’s like punching a steel cable. What even.” He openly palpates Ben’s deltoid and looks aghast at the nearest person, who happens to be Mike.

Beside Mike, Eddie has gone bright red.

Richie lets his hand fall back to the table.

There are restaurants in Maine other than Jade of the Orient, and Richie doesn’t think he’ll eat Chinese food ever again, so they’re in a shitty diner halfway between Derry and the courthouse. He’s drinking a milkshake and keeps alternating between brain freeze and threatening all his roommates with lactose intolerance (that he does not have).

He looks down at the menu and says, “Anyway, literally anything on this menu you could use to flirt with someone. _Well aren’t you just a caramel apple pie a la mode?_” It’s not quite the Kentucky-Fried voice, but he pours on the Southern Belle thick as paint.

Beverly giggles. “A real _grilled sticky_.”

“There you go, there you go, _pumpkin cheesecake_,” Richie says. He looks at Mike and says, “And there’s a _brownie fudge fantasy_, right there.”

Mike snorts into his coffee. “Beep beep, white boy.”

“Is it just desserts?” Ben asks. “Because I think I’m a real—” He squints at the menu. “—_buffalo chicken salad_—nope, it’s just desserts. I have some regrets.”

“And order is restored,” Richie says. To Eddie: “Bearclaws, what’re you eating?”

“Bearclaws?” Eddie asks, incredulous.

“Bold choice, baked goods for dinner. I approve.” Richie draws on his milkshake straw for so long that he can feel all the blood vessels in his head constrict.

“Hold that face,” Bev says, and takes a picture of him fish-kissing with brain freeze. “There we go.” He can tell by the way she’s typing with her phone that she’s sending it to Bill.

“I want, like, the most fried thing,” Eddie says. His voice drops so low with hunger that it scrapes and crackles and makes Richie’s shoulders shoot up to his ears. “Something I’d never be able to eat at home.”

“Just like, a deep-fried human foot,” Richie says, because he’s a moron and he has to say something so Eddie’s _starving hungry_ voice stops ringing in his ears.

Eddie’s whole face crumples in revulsion. “You’re fucking disgusting.”

“What do you mean, you’d never be able to eat at home?” Mike asks.

Bev’s face goes blank all at once.

Eddie’s voice is back to a normal register but hushed when he says, quietly, “My wife doesn’t let me eat deep-fried food.”

Richie chokes on his milkshake. He puts a hand over his nose to protect Ben, immediately to his right, but none of it goes up into his sinuses. “Whaddaya mean, your wife won’t let you?”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Bev says.

Richie ignores her. “They serve your wife on this menu—look.” He points at a dish labeled _Whale and Mac_.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “It’s not healthy.”

“Is everyone at this table but me eating nothing but salads?” Richie asks. “Have any of you enjoyed yourselves at a meal since we were attacked by fortune cookie babyhead cicadas?”

Mike gives him a look. “Do you think we enjoyed that meal?”

“I enjoyed everything up until the fortune cookies,” Ben says.

“I enjoyed everything up until Richie rang the gong,” Eddie says. Richie sticks his tongue out at him.

“I enjoyed everything up until the cicadas, and then after Richie asked the terrified waitress for the check,” Bev giggles.

“Yeah, Mike, can you just—fucking kill my shake, right here?” Richie asks, pushing his shake across the table in Mike’s direction.

Mike steals his shake and takes a drag on the straw.

“Bad form, Hanlon,” Richie says, shaking his head.

Eddie is staring blankly through the menu, like he’s about to shoot lasers out of his eyes.

Richie puts his fist to his mouth and makes a radio static noise. In a pinched flattened voice, he says, “Trashmouth to Spaghetti-Head, come in Spaghetti-Head, _chhhhh_.”

Eddie doesn’t even blink. “I have to go back,” he mumbles.

There is a good golden second where Richie does not understand what he means, and then the deadlights crash down on his head again. Eddie skewered, arm ripped off, blood soaking into the cracks in Richie’s glasses.

He has nothing to say.

The rest of the table goes quiet too.

Then Bev murmurs, “Do you?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Yeah, I do.”

Ben is looking at Richie with a knowingness that makes Richie want to curl up and cringe away. Mike is idly slurping Richie’s milkshake.

“You can come back,” Mike says. He points at Bev’s phone, still beside her unwrapped silverware in their napkin, but Richie knows that he means to indicate _Bill_. “You can always come back.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, but his voice sounds thin and hollow. “Yeah.”

Richie says, “I gotta show you something.”

Everyone turns to look at him. Eddie squints at him, nonplussed.

He leans all the way back in his chair; he can feel sweat at his temples, under his armpits. “Not right now,” he says. “When we go back, I gotta show you something.”

There is a long moment where Eddie just stares at him and Richie stares back. Forget lasers out of the eyes—this is like, some _X-Men_ shit, telepaths struggling to lift each other or something. Richie can’t blink.

Then Eddie says, “’Kay,” and folds his menu.

So Richie takes him to the kissing bridge.

Ben and Bev and Mike are not morons and apparently Richie is either about as subtle as he’s ever been his whole life or sharing a hotel room with five people at a time gave them all psychic powers.

Come to think of it, Bev actually does have psychic powers from the deadlights. Richie doesn’t know what he saw—_bad end_—but he wonders vaguely if he has psychic powers now, too. It would come in handy if it were for anything other than, say, seeing how Eddie’s going to die, for example.

Strike that. Richie could live with never thinking about the deadlights ever again, psychic powers or no.

Eddie gets out of the car and looks around saying, “Richie, didn’t Ben get Hamburger Helpered here?” He closes the car door and takes a few steps forward on the bridge. “Didn’t a dude recently get _murdered_ here?”

“Eds, if you want to avoid every place in Derry where someone’s been murdered, you’re gonna have to leave town.” Richie rubs his hands together. The headlights from the car are on, but he failed to take into account that it’s dark out, and it’s hard to see thirty-year-old wood carvings in the dark. His heart is thumping in his ears.

“I mean _recently_, _recently_, Richie.”

“Well apparently I have a track record for defending people from homicidal maniacs, so you’re safe as you’re gonna get,” Richie says. He’s scanning the kissing bridge. It’s been sanded recently so things are worn down, but he can still see fragments of anti-gay sentiments like _YOU HELL-BOUND HOMOS_ from the 80s.

Richie’s been to hell. He came back to Derry expecting it, really. He’s been there, done that, thank you, gonna have to try harder because he went into the black and came back out.

He stoops to scan the wooden walls.

“What’re you doing, Richie?” Eddie just sounds tired.

Richie could easily say, _Aw, man, it’s not here anymore_ and make something up. It wouldn’t matter if Eddie believed him, really, he could claim that he dragged him out here to look at the greatest _Yo Mama_ joke of all time, and Eddie will be exasperated and irritated and everything will return to the status quo and Eddie will return to New York alive, and isn’t that what Richie wanted, bare minimum? If the deadlights gave him anything they gave him that, a chance to drag Eddie out of the way, and they got to walk up out of Neibolt like men. Eddie got to walk out at all, because Richie couldn’t have carried him.

And Eddie will go back to his wife, and—

“Don’t go back to New York,” Richie says. He can’t look at Eddie when he says it.

Eddie’s silence is a tangible thing, a big brick-shaped space appearing between them as Richie continues scanning past so-and-so _wuz here_ announcements—some kind of Derry guestbook. Then Eddie takes a deep breath and says, “Richie, what?”

That’s all. Plenty of room for Richie to fill in the space, if only he can work out how.

“Don’t go back to New York,” Richie says. “I’m not saying you have to hang around in Derry for the whole trial, but you should come back to L.A. with me.”

Pause. Then Eddie says in a tone of exasperation, “And move back in with you and my mom, ha fuckin’ _ha_, Trashmouth. What the fuck are we doing out here?”

And then Richie finds it. It’s not even identifiable as his handwriting—it’s all angles, trying to make an R out of straight lines with the knife, and at the time thirteen-year-old Richie hadn’t minded that—like anyone was going to see a standard R on the kissing bridge and think,_ Why, that must be Richie Tozier, a bright upstanding budding young queer, and we’d better ritually sacrifice him in the Canal now that he’s announced his availability_. He even had plausible deniability—right? He tries to think back and realizes he can’t remember a single girl from his class who wasn’t Bev Marsh or (_gulp_) Betty Ripsom.

He stands up and turns around, hands flattened behind his back on the bridge. He’s not covering it up, not exactly, but after a moment he sets his hands down and pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the railing.

“Do you think this is stable?” he asks Eddie idly.

_“No!”_ Eddie snaps.

Richie shrugs but keeps his weight forward in case the wood makes any sudden cracking sounds. It’s a short barrier anyway; his feet nearly touch the bridge.

“Don’t go back to New York,” he repeats. “Come stay with me in L.A.”

“That’s not fucking funny, Richie,” Eddie says.

“Sure it is, I’ve always needed a human fannypack to follow me around.” He hears himself but it’s too late to bite his tongue, so he just rolls his eyes at his own shitty joke.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Richie says. “After the trial. If I get jail time, fuckin’ wait for me, and then come to L.A.”

Eddie doesn’t ask _why_.

He doesn’t say no, either.

He says, “I’m—” He turns around and gestures at the trees on either side of the Canal, like his point lies out there. “I’m _married_, Richie.”

Richie shrugs. “So’s Bev.”

“So’s Bill, and he went back!”

He shrugs again. “Bill’s Bill. Don’t go back.”

“I—” Eddie looks very pale with the car headlights reflecting on him. “Did you bring me out here because that guy _died_, Rich?”

“Fuck, no,” Richie says, because that’s literally the last thing he wants Eddie to be thinking of. He leans forward all the way and tries to put his elbows on his knees, but he can’t bring them up that far and keep his balance. Instead he puts his hands down on either side of him and just kind of _looms_ in the low-beams. He’s hyperaware of his stupid stringy body, and he’s probably going to fidget his way directly off this bridge, and he’s gonna deserve it when he goes over. “Thought Bev, Ben, and Mike would feel a little awkward if we did this at the dinner table.”

“Did what?” Eddie demands, incredulous.

“I’m—” He chooses his words carefully. “—_asking_ you not to go.”

“I don’t hear any asking,” Eddie points out, folding his arms.

Here’s the part where Richie drops to his knees on the bridge and clasps his hands together and says, _Please, Eddie-Spaghetti, please come back to Los Angeles with me, I shall bloody kill meself if you leave me, eh, wot wot_.

“You got ears, Kaspbrak,” Richie says instead.

Eddie rolls his eyes hugely. “I got a _wife_, Tozier.”

Yeah, Richie’s had enough of that argument, he heard it the first time. He folds his arms across his chest, leans forward until he can brace his elbows on his knees, and gives Eddie the biggest _you’re a fucking moron_ face he can muster. His back aches but doesn’t spasm, so that’s a mercy.

Eddie’s face goes up in flames. _“What?”_ he demands, taking a step back like the car’s side mirror is gonna protect him from Richie’s unimpressed stare.

Fine. Richie can hear himself breathing, hear a slight whistle in his nose. He’s gonna make him spell it out.

“You don’t want to go back,” he says matter-of-factly, every word slotting in line like buttons going through holes. “You want me more.”

And then he bites down on the tip of his tongue and doesn’t say anything else, and he’s… really aware of his skin? Like his shoulders? He hasn’t been this aware of his physical form since puberty. He did not miss it.

Eddie’s nostrils flare. “Fuck you, Richie,” he says, and jerks the car door open.

_Shit_, Richie thinks.

Eddie throws himself into the passenger seat and sits behind the light source, where Richie can’t see him. But he leaves the car door open. Richie can feel him _seething_.

With every moment that Eddie does not either slide over into the driver’s seat and leave Richie here at the scene of a murder in the dark, or get out of the car and stomp away back to the Townhouse in the dark, the sound of the blood pounding through Richie’s heads softens.

Slowly he slides down off the wall and moves toward the car, like Eddie’s some kind of cornered and possibly rabid animal (which he is, he’s Eddie Kaspbrak). He comes around the door with plenty of space between them and blinks the after image of the headlights away from his eyes.

Eddie is glaring straight through the windshield, his arms folded across his chest.

He doesn’t say_ you’re wrong_.

He doesn’t say _get away from me, you fucking queer._

He says, “I said I wouldn’t leave her.”

Richie frowns and lets half of his face crinkle up in confusion. “Was that, like, in your vows? Because that’s setting… some kind of tone.”

Eddie turns to look at him and his eyes are flat in a way that Richie’s never seen.

“That’s what It said to me,” he says. “It showed up as my mother, and It said she knew I would leave her.”

They talked… generally, about what It appeared to them as, through the thing with the teenaged werewolf and the thing with Stan’s painting and then the bird, and when Bev saw the leeches. Bev said that it could possess people and Richie believed it. But he’s never… it was a secret. The point of what It said to Richie was that it was a secret, and that he_ couldn’t_ tell the rest of the Losers what it said to him.

Richie opens his mouth to tell him the truth and what comes out is, “Now we don’t have time to unpack your massive Oedipal complex, man.”

Eddie’s mouth opens and he does a complete double take at Richie, then turns away from the audacity, jaw still hanging.

“That’s what kids are supposed to do,” Richie points out. “They’re supposed to leave. People are supposed to leave! We all left! I didn’t even come home when my mom died.”

Eddie puts his hands up. “Your parents didn’t love you, Richie.”

Richie feels his own mouth open. Half of him thinks_ he remembers that?_ and the other half _well of course he’s trying to cut where it hurts._

“You think I don’t know that?” he asks. “You think your mother loved you?”

Eddie’s eyes pop and his shoulders stiffen, but he doesn’t turn around. And Richie can see it, all of a sudden—how love is, for Eddie. Big, cloying, suffocating thing. Drags him down.

There are a lot of things Richie could do right then—show Eddie what he came to show him or beg him not to leave him, after all this time or tell him what he saw in the deadlights or burst into a full-on rendition of “Love is an Open Door” (come on, you know he saw the most annoying movie of 2013). But he thinks he sees—_if I push him, I’m gonna lose him._

He takes a deep breath and says, “If you want, come live with me in L.A. You can sleep on my couch. You can get a new job, get your own place. I’m sure they hire—sorry, my brain deleted your job because it was so goddamn boring if I remembered it I’d just fall unconscious.” Eddie rolls his eyes. Richie finishes, “You can start over.”

“Yeah? And what do you get out of it?” Eddie’s glaring again.

Richie straightens up, puts his hand on the roof of the car, and leans back into the night to say, “I mean, I’m super fucking gay for you, Kaspbrak, but you shouldn’t let that influence you any more than it has for the last—uh, thirty years or so.”

The silence is solid.

Then Eddie says, with a long stretch on the _W_ that would put Bill to shame, “_Wwwwwhat?”_

“No, yeah,” Richie says.

Eddie puts both hands on the car door and stands up out of it to stare at him. Richie stretches his neck out and looks over the car to avoid making eye contact.

_“Thirty?”_ Eddie echoes.

“Uh-huh.” Is that a shape in the trees? Is it a pterodactyl coming to rip his head straight off, a la_ Jesus and the Dinosaurs_? Richie can only hope.

Eddie is quiet for a moment—_furious_, Richie can tell in the quality of his silence and he has no idea what the fuck to make of that, except that if Eddie goes back to New York now at least he can do it in, like, righteous anger. Then he says, “If you’re fucking with me, Richie, I swear to God—”

Richie puts up his hands. “No, the point is, I am not fucking with you, there is no fucking happening, the lack of fucking is status quo that I am currently pointing out to you.”

_“Jesus,”_ Eddie says. “Get in the fucking car.”

“Is that, like, a _Thelma and Louise_ ‘get in the fucking car,’ or like a, _take me somewhere I can slam a door on you_ ‘get in the fucking car,’ or—”

Eddie grabs him by the collar and his face is _right there_.

Richie stares at him, too startled to pull up a mask or a voice or anything.

Eddie smiles pleasantly. “Get in the fucking car before I kill you, Richie.”


	2. In the Turtle's Mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reconciliation of canon through the multiple worlds theory, and also THERE'S ONLY ONE BED. Eddie thinks about brain damage and memory. Richie has a visit from a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agh, I'm actually kind of mad at this thing because, (like Richie's wang,) it keeps growing. I thought I could wrap this up in two parts and instead it's gonna be a whole thing, guys, this is gonna be a whole thing. I'm so mad. I can't sleep. I keep ignoring my friends and family.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: Richie still has internalized homophobia and reads homophobia into other people's responses, and then Eddie gives a GRAPHIC description of getting stabbed in the face and has a panic attack on the witness stand. If you want to skip that, just skip everything from "Eddie testifies" and go straight to "Richie drives Eddie to the airport."

Something breaks that night.

Eddie doesn’t know if it’s twenty-seven years of (_he loves me, he loves me not_) not talking about it, or whatever spell it was keeping not just five (six) adults all sharing a hotel room together, when clearly Bev and Ben are together now. If Eddie were a goddamn adult instead of vaguely terrified he’s going to step into his hotel bathroom and find an escaped mental patient waiting with a flick knife he’d give them some privacy. Whatever leftover magic, whatever the strange tension is, it’s also the thing that stops Eddie from just calling quits on Richie, that conversation on the bridge. Stops him from slamming the door—the sense that _no, you have to listen_.

When Richie backs the car out of the bridge, because he can’t just drive through like a normal person, he has to try and back up in the dark, Eddie happens to glance at the graffiti scratched into the wooden walls and see _MATURIN WAS HERE_ scratched out in weirdly artistic curvy lettering.

Maybe the thing that broke was Richie, judging from how he drums his fingertips on the steering wheel, how he keeps adjusting the tie he wore to court and yanking it a little bit further open.

He did that basically as soon as they sat down at the diner and Eddie had a sudden conviction, a real buried landmine of a memory he didn’t realize was still awake in his brain, of Richie after some kind of school event. He wore a too-big tie he had obviously borrowed from his dad and then, at the end of his obligations that day, he took the tie off and knotted it around his head. It was a real _eighties hair band_ kind of move, with Richie’s curls standing up on the top of his head and the broad tongue of the tie hanging from his ear to his shoulder.

Eddie remembered this as Richie noticed him staring, raised his eyebrows, and began quietly beatboxing at the table, unbuttoning his collar until Bev giggled and half-fell into him and Eddie gave up and threw the milkshake menu at him.

Is beatboxing fake-stripping Richie better than serious Richie, who’s now tapping out an entire drum solo instead of keeping his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road? He keeps gnawing his lower lip so it’s puffed out and swollen and ragged—someone get the man some Chapstick (_share yours_)—and Eddie can’t stop looking at it.

The thing is, Richie isn’t fucking around. Eddie finds he would much prefer it if Richie were fucking around, acting out an entire drum kit, maybe cranking the radio and yelling _Sing it, Eds!_ right before the guitar solo.

Much like the tie, Eddie doesn’t know he remembered that until it’s already in his head.

How long did they know each other? Eddie remembers the summer he was thirteen, but almost nothing after defeating It. Defeating (but not killing) a murderous clown alien (according to Richie and Mike) has such mass on a scale of trauma that it eclipses his memories of Derry; Derry was where It lived, to the point that Eddie forgot it was where he lived too, until he was remembering his mother’s house.

He used to sneak into the junkyard and steal car parts, he remembers, until his mother caught him coming home one day covered in mud from where he’d fallen in a puddle and she spent the entirety of _Wheel of Fortune_ bawling him out.

Eddie remembers that at some point he said something to a coworker, something about _Maybe when I was thirteen or fourteen, but like, who remembers being that young anyway?_ And the coworker laughed like he was making a joke, but it wasn’t a joke.

He’s seen a number of doctors in his life—it’s a high number and he stopped counting—but none of them ever seemed to ask him about, _Hey, do you have years of your personal development through childhood and adolescence just missing from your memory stores?_ Because objectively, when he thinks about it, It gave them brain damage.

It’s not that Eddie did great when he was a kid. It’s that he had a moment, when he stopped feeling small and weak and vulnerable and fragile and _sick_, and he doesn’t know when it came back. He doesn’t know whether it happened when he left the circle after the Blood Oath that day in the sun in the Barrens, or whether it happened as soon as he walked back into his mother’s house and the _smell_ just reconditioned him, all Oil of Olay and Vick’s Vaporub, or whether it happened as soon as he went off to school and never came back. When he found himself and then lost himself again.

He remembers little bits of college—he didn’t even get drunk in college, not that much, he was afraid that he would have to get his stomach pumped and then they would call his mother and she would come out to get him and take him home and he’d never leave the house again. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t know whether he believes that she would have left the house to retrieve him or whether she would have just wailed on the phone until he obeyed her field of gravity, gave up, and came home.

Stanley went to a SUNY school, he remembers suddenly. Which one? Were they ever in New York at the same time? Did he run across Stanley’s wife at some point, while they were dating, before they were engaged?

Eddie looks at his reflection in the window and sees, off to the side, Richie’s reflection lit up blue. He ought to be headbobbing and air-guitaring and just generally making the risk analysis part of Eddie’s brain put up rows of red flags all down the road. Instead—and Eddie can’t see this clearly in the reflection on the glass, but he knows—Richie just keeps chewing at his lower lip, and tap-tap-tapping on the steering wheel.

“Oh my god I’m going to kill you,” Eddie gasps out at last, when the incessant tapping gets to be too much combined with the question:_ What’s the last memory I have of you? What’s the last thing I remember you doing?_

He punches the button for the radio.

It’s a rental car, which was the second thing out of Richie’s mouth the second he caught Eddie giving the car just a frankly incredulous look.

The first thing was, “Oh, right, you get hard over cars,” which like, was not a thing that Eddie kind of hopes that’s just Richie’s hyperbole in action and not something he just forgot about himself.

The radio whines out, _“His note said, ‘if living is the problem, well that’s just baffling.’ And at the wake I waited around to see my ex first love and I barely recognized her, but I knew exactly what she was think—”_

Richie makes an incoherent startled sound—_“Dah!”_—and punches the power button.

For a moment they sit, with the weight of the words settling on them. It would have meant nothing if Richie had ignored the words, but by killing them he called attention to it and made it part of the conversation. They don’t have the conversation. Richie broke the rules by voicing it.

Richie always breaks the rules by saying something he shouldn’t.

He’s breathing very loudly at the moment, thick animal breaths.

Eddie doesn’t know what to do.

On one hand, Richie keeps looking at him like that. The second he woke up from the deadlights he gave Eddie this look, this startled wide-eyed but unafraid look that made something in Eddie’s gut go tight, and that was probably because Eddie was laying on top of him saying, “Richie, I think I killed It! I think I killed It!” And Richie didn’t look—happy, or frightened, or sad, or relieved, or anything Eddie might have expected him to look, but he was looking at Eddie and that was enough.

Eddie’s brain keeps playing that memory back in loving detail, like it can hold the image up side-by-side with Richie having some kind of stress response to the radio for comparison: _Ctrl-A-delete on the whole demon clown from outer space lair behind and around you, this is what Richie looks like with you on top of him and his hair all sweat- and water-damp and stunned_, and _over here we have Richie half out of a nice suit_. _You like all these things, Eddie, we know you like all these things, Richie knows, Richie looks at you and knows you like him, what are you going to do about that? What are you going to do about that, Eddie?_

Eddie scrubs at his forehead with the heels of his hands, a headache starting at the base of his neck. He should go home, take some ibuprofen, and call it a day.

In the cavern Richie grabbed him so hard and rolled that, before Eddie knew what was happening, there was a crack and bursting of stone right where they’d been. And as his brain scrambled to try to put together the whoosh and snap of a _spiked tentacle_ (what even?), Richie was letting him go again, getting up on his feet and running at It, because Eddie was wrong about having killed It, and he was very nearly fatally wrong.

Richie said_ You want me more_ but Eddie doesn’t know if he wants him (_like that_) like this. Like, of course Richie’s never serious, because as soon as you get past the voices and the hack writers’ scripts and the masturbation jokes and _I fucked your mom_, there’s just—Richie in a purple dress shirt Bev picked out for him, his suit jacket slung over the back of his seat, teeth appearing and vanishing and reappearing and worrying away at his lower lip.

_Worry, worry, worry._ That’s Eddie’s job.

If Richie isn’t being distracting Eddie has to look at him and Eddie has to _think_ and Eddie has to _think about _not what Richie is doing but what Richie is, what Richie has become in the intervening years since that summer that Eddie can’t remember, and what Richie has become is indisputably _man_.

“Would ya please fuckin’ say something?” Eddie demands.

Richie glances at Eddie, nose wrinkling, but immediately looks back at the road. “Can _I _say something? Oh, you want me to talk now, is that it, no more _beep beep trashmouth_, a guy fucking comes out to you and asks you to move in with him in the same breath and for some reason the burden of conversation is on _me_? Am I just some kind of—monkey, like _dance for my amusement, you monkey prostitute_ for your entertainment? You told me to get in the fucking car, I got in the fucking car, if you want something else you’re gonna have to give it to me straight, because—” And here Richie’s mouth stretches out into a rictus grin, upper lip twitching and pulling it crooked, his swollen lower lip prominent in profile. “—because, because—”

“Wow.” Eddie pretends to check his watch. “What, were you sitting on that for like eleven minutes? Or were you just stewing on the _give it to me straight_ joke for thirty years?”

“Well I won’t ask you to give it to me any other way, you’re a married man, but if you want to ask what I’m sitting on—”

And the thing is, it’s not funny.

Not that Richie’s always funny—he is usually not, which is why he always goes back to his hallmark “dick” and “your mom” jokes—but normally he at least pretends it’s funny. He wants the attention, wants people to hear him, but there’s no satisfaction in his face as he trots out the one-liners, as he babbles the way Eddie feels himself doing when he’s nervous and can’t stop. But he’s grinning widely, and his eyes are flat, and Richie is terrified. This is what Richie looks like when he’s terrified.

Because all Eddie said was “get in the fucking car” and “say something.”

“I’m not, like, making you drive out into the desert and dig your own grave, Rich, jeez,” Eddie says.

“Well thank god for that, I didn’t plan to narrowly survive a killer clown only to be taken out by a forty-year-old Keebler elf.”

“Oh my god, do you want to fucking talk about it?”

Richie looks like Eddie just invited him to kill and eat Bill. “No, I don’t want to fucking talk about it, are you kidding me?”

Well Richie broke the rules in the first place by bringing it up, by saying to Eddie _You want me_ like he was sure of it (because he was). Eddie ought to get a pass because he didn’t want to talk about it either, and yet here they are.

“So how long have you known?”

Eddie tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter if Richie interprets that as _about you_ or _about me_.

Richie takes his hands off the wheel to scrape at his hair and Eddie immediately squawks “_hands on the wheel!”_ at him. Richie immediately puts his hands back down, his eyes bulging.

“You’re totally taking me out into the woods to kill me.”

“Well, that one was your own fault, you have my life in your hands.”

“You were a lot nicer the last time my life was in your hands,” Richie complains, and then sways back and forth slightly in his seat. “Anyway, like, since I got to Derry? Which—I don’t remember how long we’ve been here. I don’t remember how long it took us to kill It—I had my travel agent book me in for three days with an option to renew, but did we kill It in three days? Or did we kill It in two days? Because there was enough time for Mike to drag Bill home and fucking roofie him, and that was definitely at night, and then we got hammered, and then Bowers tried to kill us in the day, and I feel like being in the lair—”

Eddie sits up in his seat and points at him. “It was like a whole overnight thing, wasn’t it? Or did it just feel like that in the dark? Did we go to the quarry in the morning or in the afternoon? And when did Bill go to the festival?”

Richie shakes his head. “I don’t know, man, I was in the deadlights for like, days, my brain’s fucking scrambled.”

Instead of grabbing on to the easily available _scrambled brain_ Eddie stares at him.

“You were in there for… minutes, Richie. Like, tops.”

“No, I know that,” Richie says. He shakes his head. “Took me on a fucking time loop, and Bev did that when we were kids but she was in there for like _hours_ and now it turns out that she foresaw all of our deaths? So I don’t know what kind of psychic powers…” He shakes his head and waves a hand at the same time, dismissing the idea.

Eddie tries to process back to how they got here and says, “Wait, are you telling me you only remembered—remembered having—remembered_ me_ when you remembered me, or like—”

“My big lesbian crush on you? No, I’m serious, dude, I forgot I was gay. I mean I didn’t like—” He pulls a face, still staring out the windshield, lip still shiny with saliva. “—I’m not saying I haven’t looked at another human being for thirty years, I live in L.A., hot people move to L.A. to make money being hot, it’s just how it is.”

Eddie gives Richie’s mouth a wary look out of the corner of his eye.

“I literally have not thought about the—” Richie puts up his hands and blinks like a strobe, making Eddie reach out and stabilize the wheel. Richie just bats him away and continues on as though uninterrupted. It is the first time Richie has actually touched Eddie since _You want me more_ and Eddie almost whips his hand away as he startles, but Richie is visibly trying to hunt down audacity and take refuge in it, so Eddie doubts he notices. “—_feelings_ of it all, I haven’t like _dated_ much, and that’s why I have a bunch of hack writers making girlfriend jokes that I am not too good to just—” He draws one hand up his throat to his chin. “—_regurgitate_ on stage, man.”

Eddie pretends to think about this very seriously for a few seconds and specifically does _not_ actually think about it because if he does then he’ll have to investigate the way Richie’s saying _people_ instead of _women_ is making his brain fill up with sand.

“So are you telling me you’re a forty-year-old virgin?” he asks.

Richie’s mouth opens in surprise and then breaks into a massive grin. “Oh, there he goes, ladies and gentlemen, had any good chucks lately? Had any good chucks, Eds? No, I’m not a fucking forty-year-old virgin—” He reaches out with his right hand and begins mercilessly noogying the top of Eddie’s head.

It is the least sexual gesture any person can do to another, and as Eddie’s trying to shove Richie away and squawking at him and Richie’s muttering, “Forty-year-old virgin, ask your mother, Kaspbrak, it was like Jiminy Cricket on the brow of the whale—” Eddie finds himself laughing as the knots in his stomach slowly relax. The walls are back up, for one thing, and it’s not that Eddie doesn’t… appreciate (_like. want._) Richie being honest, Richie _attempting_ to be serious, it’s less…

_Frightening, it’s less frightening, because you’re fucking scared of him,_ the part of him that sounds both like It and his mother chants in the back of his head. _Because if he hadn’t said that, if he hadn’t given you what you wanted this whole time, would you even be thinking about not going back to your wife? As she freezes your cards and tries to sue to compel you back to New York, if Richie Tozier weren’t here saying that he’s available, would you be thinking about dropping the person you promised to live with for the rest of your life?_

Well. He came to Derry half-convinced he would die. Forget talking about _time to go_, forget talking about _I don’t need this_ after the Jade of the Orient, after the crying baby in the fortune cookie and the cicadas and the creeping eyeball. The reason he wrecked his car when Mike called was because he thought death was on the line and Myra was just going to have to hold for it.

And Eddie went to his death.

_Might be the only thing you’ve ever done like a man,_ the voice tells him.

But the spell breaks, so things change. Time starts passing again, for one.

Richie sits up in his chair in the bar at the Townhouse and straightens his back, feeling the stretch of muscle and the bone-deep ache that comes with it. “So is anyone else completely fucked up from sleeping in a weirdly platonic orgy for the last—I don’t know how long?”

Mike blinks once. He’s still got his e-reader in hand; Richie has already made the joke that Mike’s technically spending his nights with Bill.

“The hell kind of orgies are you going to in L.A.?” he asks.

Eddie is subdued in a way he usually isn’t, his chin tucked slightly down and looking at people out of the corners of his eyes, like he’s suspicious. Like Richie’s made him suspicious. He also hasn’t asked what Richie dragged him out to the kissing bridge to look at, as if it wasn’t the emotional equivalent of Richie committing seppuku and spreading his intestines out on a white sheet for Eddie’s perusal.

Richie waggles his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He turns to Ben and says, “Look, I know you went on some kind of vision quest that imparted the beauty of iceberg lettuce into your life—”

“You have actually been on a vision quest,” Mike reminds him.

Richie waves a hand and says, “—but if you’d like to sleep on a mattress tonight, you are more than welcome to it. Or—” He considers. “Like, the three of you are welcome to fight it out for my spot. I’m going back to my room.”

Bev smiles an incredulous kind of smile.

“Forgive me for abandoning you, love of my life, fire of my—”

“Beep,” Ben interrupts.

Richie ignores him and instead kisses Bev’s hands, which makes her laugh.

“Uh, not that I don’t appreciate you guys’ boundless generosity, but I literally don’t have a bed,” Mike reminds them all. “My bed’s part of a crime scene.”

“Oh shit, Mike doesn’t have a bed!” Richie realizes abruptly.

“Yeah, and, uh, my room was released by CSI and I don’t think they’ve been charging me for it. At least, no additional charges have appeared on my card,” Eddie says.

“And Eddie’s a squatter who stole the bedding. Right. Well. After those crime scene cleaners had a go at the room, that would probably be like returning to your natural habitat, right, Eds? Your Mecca? Your home away from home?”

Eddie wrinkles his nose at him. Briefly he looks exactly like he did when he was a kid, and Richie’s heart goes_ ba-thump_ like a kick to the chest, instead of the anxious fluey hum it’s been all night. Then Eddie looks away, and it’s gone.

Bev looks at Ben and asks, “Well, are you sleeping in your room?”

They all get to watch Ben’s eyebrows go up. He asks carefully, “Am I sleeping in my room?”

“Well, since Richie’s trying to volunteer the other half of my bed out, I’m gonna go ahead and volunteer Ben’s room,” Bev says. She’s smirking slightly as she says it. Richie watches the acceptance appear on Ben’s face. God, Richie loves Bev.

“Hey, Ben, I’ve been carrying an old condom in my wallet for twenty-seven years,” Richie starts.

Ben looks up at him. “Oh, good, do you mind if I burn it in a ritual to kill a demon?”

“Oh! Haystack Calhoun, everybody.”

“That’ll release demons, not kill them,” Mike says matter-of-factly.

“Well, Mike’s the expert,” Richie says. “Mike, if you get scared of escaped mental patients and you need a—” He claps both hands to his own stomach. “—scrawny white comedian to protect you, or if you just wanna come up and spoon—”

Mike snorts, grinning, but Richie has to look at Eddie—out of the corner of his eye, the way Eddie’s been looking around since they got back and started drinking, because _fuck _court—and Eddie’s lips have become a flat line.

Great. Just great.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mike says. He holds up his e-reader. “I’m up late, so if a black man climbs in your bed at three in the morning, try not to piss yourself, all right?”

“For you? Anything.” Richie gives finger guns. “Eddie, if you wanna go out and whisper sweet nothings into the backseat of my rental car? It’s leather. So like, clean up with your Baby Wipes afterwards, I know you have them.” He gets up and walks over to the stairs. As he reaches the landing he turns back around and ducks to see Bev through the doorway, croons, _“Make good choices!”_ and leaves.

And then he goes back to his room and it’s just the refrain of the good old _you ruined everything, Trashmouth, you can’t keep your fucking mouth shut, you don’t know what’s good for you, you’re gonna be alone until you die, and these people who knew you in middle school were good enough to let you pretend that wasn’t the case, and now it’s time to hit the road, jack. You might be going to fucking jail soon, see if you miss cuddle parties in prison._

He yanks off the nice designer clothes Bev picked out for him and throws them on the desk in the corner, unfolded, and turns out the light. No well-meaning housekeeper has made his bed in his absence. This hotel is not real, it’s some kind of bubble where Richie can play pretend that things are fine, things are just like the good old days in their clubhouse, until he has to go and fuck it up like he does with fucking everything.

When someone taps at the door in the middle of the night, he knows it’s not Mike, even as he rolls over and opens one eye.

“Pennywise?” he asks.

Sometimes thinking about it when he’s falling asleep is enough to shock him back into awareness, staring at Bev’s hair in the dark or the ceiling or the bathroom door waiting to hear the gurgling from the pipes. Right now, Richie is equal parts _too tired for this _and _fucking kill me_.

“Uh, no?” says Eddie.

Richie has a moment where he just freezes, staring at the doorknob and remembering that his hotel room has an electronic lock on it so he’s going to have to get up to let Eddie in, if Eddie is here to be let in, and Richie is in his underwear, which he didn’t think twice about with Mike, but now Richie has the absurd desire to drape himself in a sheet and Julius Caesar it over to the door.

“Richie?” Eddie asks, as if to confirm that Richie, too, is not Pennywise.

“Yeah,” Richie says, and gets up and drags himself over to the door. He opens it without turning on the light.

Eddie is still dressed for court, his suit jacket hung over one of the two suitcases he’s dragging with him. The other one has a big black canvas bag balanced on it.

Richie’s brain thinks _lesbians_ and _U-Hauls_ before he manages to ask, “Uh, you movin’ in, Eduardo?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, businesslike. “Back up.”

Richie almost asks Eddie if he realizes that Richie is in his boxers, but if Eddie hasn’t noticed that Richie’s not gonna point it out. He puts his hands up in the universal_ do whatever the fuck you want_ and backs up. Eddie awkwardly hauls his suitcases in, turns on the light, and closes the door behind him.

Richie jumps. “What time is it?”

“Like, one,” Eddie replies.

Richie is so disappointed in himself. “Yeah, well, I’m old.”

He doesn’t really know what to do after that, so he just climbs back into bed and covers himself with the hotel duvet that he knows Eddie will refuse to touch, leaving him the topsheet. Eddie doesn’t seem to pay much mind to this, instead positioning his bags against the wall and laying them down and opening all three of them up. Richie watches this the same way he thinks he would watch an ant farm, going in and out of sleep with the light still on and snapping awake every time Eddie huffs or a zipper buzzes along its track.

At one point he loses track of Eddie for what he feels like only a few seconds and he hears water running. Then Eddie says, “Hey, Richie?” and Richie’s brain comes back online.

“Mm?” Richie asks intelligently.

Eddie doesn’t say anything for a moment and then Richie remembers that Bowers just about murdered him in a bathroom identical to that one. Richie gets his feet under him and sits up, putting his elbows on his knees.

“You out of industrial-strength toothpaste or what?” he calls through the open door.

Audible brushing noises happen.

Richie asks, “Wasn’t your toothbrush a crime scene?”

The sound of spitting. Lovely.

Eddie says, “My toothbrush wasn’t a crime scene, what does that even mean?”

He’s tired; when he turns to look at the drawn curtains, just for something to do, he sways slightly. “Weren’t you brushing your teeth when Bowers, like, cut a glory hole into your face?”

Eddie chokes, coughs, and turns off the tap. The sound of running water cuts off with a squeal of abused metal. “You’re fucking disgusting, Richie.”

“Not what your mom said last night.”

“I saw you last night. You drool.”

“I do not,” Richie says, which is a lie and he knows it.

“You do.”

“Well, you still came to share a bed with me, so welcome to Lake Tozier, motherfucker.”

Eddie just makes a disgusted noise and comes back out, toothbrush in hand. He changed clothes at some point—probably while he was in there—and he’s wearing a white t-shirt and striped gray pants. Richie squints at them before he concludes—yep, those are definitely part of a set, and Eddie’s trying to pretend he’s too cool to wear pajama sets, as if Richie hasn’t met him before.

He flops back down to the melodic sound of Eddie fussing with his toiletries. “That wasn’t two minutes.” He drags the duvet back over himself and rolls into a burrito.

“Yeah, I got a fucking hole in my face, I’m trying not to make it angry.”

“I mean most people have a couple of holes in their faces, Eds, you’re just a little more asymmetrical than usual.”

Eddie goes quiet. Richie opens his eyes again and sees Eddie is surveying the bed like it’s hostile territory.

“Which pillow haven’t you lain on?” Eddie asks.

Richie, whose head is currently on one of the two pillows, looks at him incredulously. “Uh, neither? What kind of question?”

Eddie makes a short _tsk_ing sound and goes to turn out the light. As the room suddenly goes black again—the light was on for just enough time for Richie’s eyes to stop smarting and to wipe out his night vision—Richie’s sense of hearing just improves by leaps and bounds specifically to make his life worse. He can hear Eddie’s feet on the carpet, taking long and ginger steps toward the other side of the bed.

“’M surprised you don’t sleep with your slippers on,” Richie mumbles.

“What?”

“I said—”

The weight of the mattress shifts as Eddie climbs into the bed. Richie sinks his fingers into the other side of the mattress like it’s the deck of a ship buckling under him.

“—I’m surprised you don’t sleep, like, fully-dressed in house slippers, with like, your long nightcap and—I’m thinking about that book, the one, the Christmas one.”

“_The Night before Christmas_?” Eddie asks, because he’s good like that. He’ll volunteer the information Richie is looking for to roast him.

“Yeah, that one. You ought to be walking around like Scrooge with your big tent of a nightie, and your candlestick, and Ma in her kerchief…” Richie trails off.

Eddie is quiet for a moment and then he says, “Do you think Ebenezer Scrooge is from _The Night Before Christmas_?”

“Hey, you climbed into my bed in the middle of the night, you don’t get to accept the hospitality and bitch about the Richie Tozier Memorial Library at the same time.”

“It’s a memorial library? Are you dead?”

“Yes.”

Silence and stillness. Richie keeps his eyes shut, colors blooming behind his eyelids.

“Hospitality,” Eddie snarks. There is a great shaking of the mattress as he turns over, and a shifting sound as he arranges the sheets to his satisfaction. “Go back to sleep, Rich.”

“Yeah, yeah, nighty-night, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie mumbles, because he can’t help himself.

Eddie continues to fuss with the sheets. “Good night, Richie.”

If Eddie tosses and turns, or sighs, or farts before he can fall asleep, Richie doesn’t hear it.

The spell is broken now that they’re no longer in the same room, so of course Richie dreams. Not of the deadlights, or of It, thank god, but of the Chinese restaurant over and over again. The room is suddenly wide as a football stadium and there are yards between him and all the other losers at the same table, and Eddie is saying, “Let’s take our shirts off and kiss,” and Richie is struggling to reach his hand to arm wrestle. Mike looks gaunt, and Bev’s hair is so long it flows on the floor, and Bill doesn’t have any hair at all on top but he has a beard and the same piercing blue eyes.

And the fortune cookies. The fortune cookies come out with the check and Richie can’t open his mouth to say _don’t open it!_ because Bev is already cracking hers open and a gout of blood comes out and soaks them all.

But that’s not right, the blood happened the day they cleaned Bev’s bathroom, and then Stan took all the rags down to the laundromat. Richie took Bev to the movies but Stan’s idea of a date was taking the girl to the laundromat, Stan the Man, but Richie guesses it worked out for him. The waitress comes out and Bev is about to scream and Bill is hissing _Dummy up!_ (what does that even mean?) and they all freeze, as if so long as they don’t move, no one will see anything.

The fish tank behind Eddie—who is wearing glasses this time, but they’re not Richie’s, and his hair is blond for some reason—comes into sudden focus and a turtle swims by, makes eye contact with Richie and says, “Sorry, continuity error. Occupational hazard, you get it.”

Richie still can’t speak and he’s still coated in the blood from the fortune cookie. Any minute now all his teeth are gonna pour out of his mouth and onto the table.

“You better wake up,” the turtle says. “He’s fighting.”

And Richie startles up and out of the black and into his body, his own hands startlingly white in the dark against the blue duvet. They’re shaking. His ears are ringing—not with Bill’s words but with the turtle’s surprisingly deep voice—was that James Earl Jones?—and as the feedback fades from his ears, he hears Eddie.

Eddie is giggling in his sleep.

It is fucking terrifying.

Richie sits up immediately. At some point the rigid no-man’s-land in the middle of the bed dissolved, probably because Eddie sleeps like a mummy, and Eddie is curled in the sheet. _Winding sheet_, Richie’s brain supplies. His face is crumpled in the dark, and his upper lip is peeling up as he tries to speak through a clenched jaw—Richie has seen the rigmarole of the nighttime retainer, which Eddie explained in great detail every time someone asked and again when Richie didn’t.

Richie reaches down and grabs Eddie’s shoulder and says, “Eds, come on, you can’t do that, I already lived through two horror movies—”

Eddie grabs his arm and Richie sees his eyes open suddenly, white and wild in the dark. They’re unfocused for a moment, almost rolling as the sleep clings to him, and Richie thinks very clearly, _Pennywise, I let Pennywise in bed with me_ before Eddie’s gaze suddenly focuses and his mouth opens in a gasp. He blinks hard, several times, panting, and then drops his head and continues breathing hard.

“You laugh in your sleep, man,” Richie says into that wet silence. He’s still waiting for Eddie to let go of the death grip he has on his forearm. “And I wasn’t telling jokes, either, so.”

The last panting breath Eddie manages has the ghost of a laugh in it. He lets go of Richie and then wipes at his own face. Richie doesn’t know what to do—pretend not to see that he’s crying?—so he just sits there and watches.

“I knew this would happen,” Eddie murmurs, his voice small in the dark.

Richie is pretty sure he knows what Eddie means, but he pretends he doesn’t. “Knew you’d do the scariest fucking thing I’ve heard in my life, man? Because you coulda warned me.”

Eddie huffs again, almost a laugh, and then rolls onto his back. He’s still completely twisted around in the sheet, but this puts like half an inch between his body and Richie’s legs. At some point Richie kicked his feet out from under the duvet—stupid duvet, anyway—and turned onto a diagonal across the matress, and Eddie did exactly what Richie saw him doing with Bev that morning after he posted bail, which was wrap his arms across his own chest like he was lying in a coffin and then press his whole body up against Richie’s back, nose to toes.

“Sorry,” Eddie says. “Not used to sharing.”

Richie accepts that for a moment and then thinks _hey wait a minute_ and before he can remind Eddie that he’s married, Eddie is clutching at his own forehead with one hand and fumbling for his pillow with the other, trying to get resituated.

“What the hell was so funny, man?” Richie asked. “I gotta get my writers in on that shit.”

“For sure not you,” Eddie mumbles, exhausted and shaky.

“Oh!” Richie says, because he’s a moron. “Good chucks, Kaspbrak, good chucks.”

For a few moments he sits there, watching Eddie visibly shake and sweat as he recovers from whatever nightmare that was, and then Richie cautiously slides back down into the bed. He can see the crown of Eddie’s head, the wild hair crushed against the pillow and, after a moment, he reaches out.

Eddie goes still, and then he tilts his head up and back and looks at Richie not with incredulity or disgust but… something Richie can’t identify. Then he rolls to turn his back to Richie. His shoulderblades are sharp as chicken wings even through the white sheet.

“You got lice?” Richie asks.

“You tell me,” Eddie says.

Richie—who has put up with a lot recently, he thinks, just in his life, he’s due for a good thing—reaches out hesitantly and runs his fingertips through the hair at the back of Eddie’s head. Right where it stops being long enough to slick back and becomes short and tapered down his neck. Richie gingerly strokes down his nape, the way he might stroke an angry cat (if he were the kind of guy who just went around petting angry cats), and short little spikes of Eddie’s hair relax and fall back into place.

Eddie makes a humming noise and tilts his head back into Richie’s hand.

Heart thumping, Richie reaches his left hand up and sets his fingertips at the top of Eddie’s head, right where his hairline stops and his forehead starts, and drags his hand back along Eddie’s skull.

“’S good,” Eddie mutters, words half sleep.

So Richie pushes his luck. It’s what he does.

He lays there in the dark, his heartbeat pounding in his ears like he’s climbing flights of stairs, and he strokes Eddie’s hair. Considering Eddie has crippling anxiety about being alone in a hotel bathroom, his hair feels very clean and soft and it smells of mint, and Richie cuts waves of it apart between his fingers and across his palms. He loses track of what he’s doing, as Eddie’s breathing goes deep and then shallow and steady, and Richie stays up, killing his self-preservation stroke by stroke.

Eddie testifies.

The lawyer asks him what he was doing when he met Mr. Bowers at the Derry Townhouse, and Eddie replies that he was washing his face and doesn’t explain that he was covered in leper puke at the time.

And what happened next?

“I looked up, and I saw Bowers in the mirror.”

Which side? Right or left?

Eddie has what’s going to be a scar there to help remind him.

And then what happened?

“He took a swing at me,” Eddie says, “and I didn’t understand what was happening, and the next thing I know I can see my reflection in the mirror, and there’s this long black thing sticking out of my face. And then I realize it’s a knife, and I start screaming, and I realize I’ve been stabbed, and Bowers was just over my shoulder, grinning, proud of himself.”

“Objection! Hearsay.”

“Mr. Kaspbrak, please restrict your testimony to what you felt, what you experienced, not what you assume the deceased felt.”

Eddie takes a deep breath and says, “He was smiling, and he was giggling.”

And then what happened?

“I said, ‘Why did you do that?’” He realizes he’s lifted his hand to his face, cupping it around an imaginary knife.

What did the deceased say?

“I don’t remember,” Eddie admits. His chest feels tight. It's not the answer that Mr. Deaver wants, he's sure of it, but he doesn't have anything else to offer. “I don’t remember if he said anything. He was laughing—like a kid, his teeth were bared and he was just giggling through his them, and I—” He swallows, he takes a deep breath but feels no relief. He keeps going. He doesn’t have asthma. “—I can’t get my mouth to work right, because there’s a knife in my face. And I start backing up toward the bathtub.”

Why the bathtub?

“I don’t know.” Breath. Hold it. Let it out. “I guess I thought, I’d better put some kind of wall between me and him, but there weren’t any walls and I didn’t feel like I could get to the door before he would get me—”

“Objection! The witness can’t argue the deceased’s intention.”

Breath. Eddie’s lungs inflate like red balloons, two red balloons in his ribcage.

“Your Honor, the witness had just been assaulted. And the witness is not arguing that Mr. Bowers intended to attack him again as he tried to exit the room, he’s recounting how he felt in that moment, and how he felt was a profound and life-threatening fear.”

“Mr. Kaspbrak, are you okay?”

“Fine,” Eddie says. He’s tough. He’s not delicate, he runs just as fast as any of the other boys, he runs faster, he runs away from his problems. Not as fast as Bill Denbrough—somewhere in England, somewhere far away where he can't help Eddie—could bike, Bill Denbrough could beat the devil, but Eddie was fast, he could run, all he does is run…

Ben’s hands appear at the height of his chest, palms turned toward the ceiling and rising as he breathes in. His shoulders visibly rise. When he holds his breath he closes his hands, and when he exhales he opens them again. Eddie cottons on to what he wants in a second and breathes in with him the second time.

“Mr. Kaspbrak, are you ready to continue?”

“Yes,” Eddie says. He’s a liar.

“I overrule the objection,” the judge says. “If we could proceed with sensitivity, that would be appreciated, counsel. And if the defense could proceed without sentimentality?”

Yes, Your Honor.

Eddie looks at Ben and they breathe together. Beside him, Bev’s red chignon bobs as she nods in encouragement.

“So I climb back toward the bathtub and he’s still laughing, and I—” He feels himself grinning and he tries to shove it down, but his mouth just wobbles. “I remember, because you know how when someone smiles at you your instinct is to smile back? So I start smiling, and half of my face doesn’t work and that’s right about when it starts to hurt, and there’s blood, I can feel it running down my cheek, and I start laughing—you know, how you do when someone is mad at you? Like, if you can play along, it’ll be fine. Just play along and it’ll just wash over you. He stabbed me in the face, and I laughed.”

And then, absurdly, he feels the smile just crawl across his face, the same way his chest seizes with a laugh, and because he’s starting to crack up, he looks at Richie.

Richie always smiles when he’s scared, but he’s not smiling now. He’s just staring at Eddie, watching Eddie melt down on the stand.

“So I’m laughing, and I get in the bathtub, and I just kind of—” He mimes closing the shower curtain around him. It was stupid—he could feel it was stupid as he was doing it, but right about that point he was realizing that the blood running down the side of his face and his neck was probably his. “—and I’m laughing. Who does that?”

"Mr. Kaspbrak?"

“So I think, I’m a real sitting duck in here, and I don’t know what to do with the knife in my face, but hey, I have a knife. It’s in my face, but I have a knife. And I know you shouldn’t take the knife out of your face—it’s like if you get shot with an arrow, you shouldn’t try to pull the arrow out because there are spikes on the arrowhead that stop it from coming out backwards, and you shouldn’t try to push it through your leg, because you’ll just do more damage like that, but I can’t think what to do with the knife—my brain is like, ‘just reach your whole hand into your mouth and pull it through,’ because I thought I’d just been murdered, I didn’t know what was happening. But there’s a knife in my face, and I can’t—”

He starts panting here slightly, his mouth twisted around a giggle that won’t come out.

“—I can’t close my mouth. Like, I can’t close my lower jaw, because there’s a blade between my teeth. It actually scraped across my gums and teeth and redirected, the doctor told me when I got to the hospital, it didn’t go in clean, but Bowers just took a swing at me and suddenly there was a knife in my face, and I have to get this piece of metal out of my face. So I—” He mimes reaching up and pulling the knife out of his face.

“Mr. Kaspbrak. We recognize that this is a very traumatic memory for you, but if you could stick to the events, and not to… We don’t need to hear about treatment for arrow wounds. If you could just tell us what happened next? And we do need your responses to be verbal and not gesture.”

Yes, yes, Eddie’s a good boy. He needs guidance sometimes, he’s so delicate.

“I picked up the knife, and I just kind of held it up with the sharp part pointing toward the shower curtain, because I was waiting for him to pull back the shower curtain and I would be like—” He glances at the court stenographer and tries to describe brandishing the imaginary knife as he’s doing it. “—I thought I would bring it up in front of me, like I could put that between him and me, and then he couldn’t get me, and I would be safe, and he would just go away. I don’t know why he did that, he could’ve—he could’ve stabbed me in the neck—”

His throat is closing up.

“He could have killed me right there, and he didn’t, and I’m in the shower behind the curtain laughing my head off, and then the whole shower curtain just falls on me.”

Eddie stares at Richie and the judge calls a recess to give Eddie some time to get himself back under control. But Eddie feels himself falling flat—a joke dying right under him—at the stony look on Richie’s face. His eyes are wide, his expression is grave, but that’s the look he had on his face before he got up and ran for It to just yank Its leg off Its body.

If the jury see that face, they’re going to know that Richie would kill for Eddie. He hit Bowers with an axe when he saw him on Mike, but—and this is an old memory, half-blinded by puke like most of Eddie’s life seems to be these days—it's the _Welcome to the Loser’s Club, asshole!_ face, of Richie spinning the bat in his hand. Richie can say that it was the first time he killed a guy, and he threw up afterwards, but Eddie knows what Richie looks like with murderous intent.

The prosecutor quibbles with Eddie about his _I don’t knows_ and _I can’t remember_. “Because I was very scared, and I can only tell you what I remember.” After the hearsay objection, Mr. Deaver gives him an approving nod when he says that.

After Eddie testifies, they call up a guy from Forensics who reports that they found blood on the inside of the bathtub, on the outside of the shower curtain. This is, the witness says, consistent with the idea that the assailant (Bowers) lunged at the bathtub (Eddie) and was impaled (stabbed) on the knife through the curtain.

Eddie goes back to the Derry Townhouse and packs his bags. He calls Myra to tell her he’s coming, and he asks her to unfreeze the cards so he can get a flight home. She volunteers to book it for him and he shuts her down, saying, “No, I’m on my way to the airport, I’ll just have someone at the counter do it, I just need to be able to pay for the flight and the baggage.”

It's a lie. He lies to his wife so he can have just a little more time.

Then he lies fully-dressed, in his suit, on the bed, with his shoes hanging down to the floor. He stares from the end of the bed—which Richie made at Eddie’s behest because Eddie will not touch that duvet outside of a panic attack, which is what is happening right now, it’s not asthma, it’s just fear, he lived through It twice but it's fear that's going to kill him here, in a hotel room—straight into the bathroom, still illuminated by the clear sunlight coming in through the window.

Richie drives Eddie to the airport.

“You can say goodbye to my car,” he says. “And you’re gonna need someone strong to lift your ridiculous suitcases, so here’s an old white comedian who just threw his back out.” Talk about surprisingly strong, look at Mike! He’s a librarian!

When Richie told him this, in case Mike didn’t notice his own career and that he has no right to be so buff, Mike said calmly, “Books are heavy.”

“So is knowledge,” Ben said seriously, and they all cracked up for a little bit.

But Richie drives Eddie to the airport because Eddie is getting that faraway look on his face, like he’s here but he’s also staring down the barrel of a gun, and Richie thinks _don’t go_ at the same time he thinks _yeah, I’d leave too_. If it weren’t for the whole trial thing, he would be _outta here. Gonezo. Vamoosed._

Fucking Bowers. Just ruining things, even after he’s gone.

Richie parks the car outside the drop-off and says, “Okay, here you are, door-to-door service courtesy of Tozier Chauffeur Cars.” He gestures at the backseat. “Should I get out so that you can say your goodbyes?”

“It’s not that nice a car, Richie.”

But Eddie’s reply is curiously flat. It’s perfunctory instead of a retort, like he doesn’t even really hear him.

Richie puts a hand to his chest. “Shhh. She’ll hear you.” He mouths _jeez_ and looks around in mock offense. “Do you need help wheeling your two-hundred-pound suitcases in and paying eight thousand dollars in baggage fees?”

“It’s a hundred and twenty-five dollars in baggage fees—”

“Ah, but what about the—”

“—plus tax.”

“Jeez, risk assess—” Richie pretends to forget the name of Eddie’s job and just makes weird hissing sounds for a good ten seconds.

Eddie is still looking at the airport like it’s a garbage dump.

Richie gives up. “—sing pays that well, huh?”

Eddie grimaces.

“I mean I’m not judging,” he says, totally judging, “but like, I had a nervous breakdown on stage right before I got here and my whole tour got cancelled, so I guess I’m just used to getting paid by gig. Which ought to come in handy when I’m in jail and counting on Steve and Ben and Bill to sometimes put money in my account so I can buy cigarettes and Doritos—”

“You’re not going to jail,” Eddie says.

“I_ killed_ a guy.”

Admittedly, Richie felt worse in the moment about that than he does now. Not that he felt bad about killing someone who was trying to kill Mike—yeah, they’d had enough of that in about 1989, thank you very much—but he hadn’t known really, at the time, what he was doing. The axe was a glorified rock in a rock war, and it happened to come on a stick, and also Richie has done the Derry Public Library the great disservice of getting one of their artifacts labeled as evidence in a murder trial. (But like, Bill says that Mike steals from Native Americans anyway, so.)

No, he’s pretty sure that—the immediate seizing up of his shoulders and roll of his stomach is the evolutionary response to killing something at least visibly human. Richie will beat the shit out of a clown—like, any day, he’ll beat the shit out of a clown right now, he’s had enough of that for the rest of his life—but Richie is not tough, and he kind of depends on a society to stop him from dying alone in an east L.A. bar. He’s pretty sure his gut went _you have just thrown away the whole social contract, so we’re just gonna—_and threw away everything he'd eaten for two to three days.

But like—

Eddie, up there, on the stand. Looking like Richie, looking at Richie, shy of an asthma attack but melting down in the vacuum of no longer giving a solitary fuck of who's looking at you because the thing that happened to you is so bad.

And like, Bowers was fucking crazy to begin with, but Richie doesn’t feel as bad as he’s sure Deaver would like him to appear.

Eddie shrugs one shoulder and jerks his head around at the same time. “Yeah, but there was no premeditation. And, like, you’re not fucking funny, man.”

“Weird flex during my murder trial, but okay—”

“No, shut up and listen, I mean, you’re not fucking funny, and I’m like, good at my job but only in the context that it’s easy to learn and I’ve been doing it for years—shut _up_, Richie—” He says, because Richie is definitely about to make a _doing it_ joke. “—but it’s like Mike said at dinner—what are the odds that of all of us, Bill ends up making a living _writing_, of all things, and Bev sells out internationally, and Ben—people hate that goddamn communications tower and everyone still calls him a genius—and you—”

He gestures at Richie, hands splayed open in his direction. His hands are different than Richie remembers—obviously, because Eddie’s no longer a skinny thirteen-year-old—but the joints of his fingers and at the base of his thumb stand out, definitely a man's hands, and they got old without Richie even noticing it. He can see it, right here, in Eddie’s hands.

“—you don’t even write your own shit, and it’s not good, and somehow you’re still making it big, and I can’t believe they let you go onstage dressed like that. And I do all right for myself—but the only one who didn’t get that is Mike, and that’s because Mike stayed because he had to stay.”

“Are you suggesting that It bribed us to get out of town, and then ritually sacrificed a dude and wrote _Come Home_ in his blood on the bridge because It changed Its mind?” Richie asks flatly.

Eddie shakes his head. “No, not It. Something else. It’s like—” He puts a hand to the crown of his head, flattening his hair under his palm, and Richie has a _vicious_ texture memory so strong he has to make a fist to stop from reaching out. Eddie’s eyes are wide and earnest. “—it’s like something in the back of my head, one of those details that I’m forgetting—”

“Do you remember Bill?” Richie asks, tone dry but actually very concerned.

Eddie waves a hand. “Of fucking course I remember Bill, I just told you I remember Bill, but _Stan_.”

But Stan indeed. It all comes down to Stan.

“What about Stan?”

“Mike said he was, like, one of the best accountants in the whole south,” Eddie says, “and I don’t know how many accountants are in the south—”

“Account-_taint_,” Richie interjects, which Eddie rightfully ignores.

“—but he was really young, you know? He was really young and he got married really young and he—” Eddie falls silent and starts shaking his head hard, eyes shut.

“Are you having a seizure?” Richie asks. “Do you wanna, like, bite down on my wallet or something?”

“Was Stan older or younger than us, Rich?”

Richie blinks. “What?”

Eddie opens his eyes and says, “Either Stanley was older than us and he was in the same class as us—as Ben, I mean, you know the tracks—” He extends both index fingers and makes a gesture a little bit like koi fish swimming around each other, a yin-yang symbol to indicate the rotations of classes in Derry Middle School. Eddie has blunt square fingernails, neatly trimmed, with no dirt under them to be found. “—or he was younger and he skipped a grade, and I can’t remember which.”

“He was the same age as us,” Richie says. “No, he had to be, I went to his bar mitzvah that summer, when you were still in the hospital. It was great, like, he said _fuck_ in front of his dad’s whole temple and then he literally dropped the mic, Eddie, Stan was thirteen and he had balls the size of cantaloupes, he shoulda been the comedian—”

“Are you sure Stan’s dad was a rabbi?” Eddie asks.

Richie blinks twice. “Well, he was up there and he was wearing the big fancy scarf, so like, I friggin’ hope so, I don’t know anything about being Jewish.”

“There are—other things that don’t line up,” Eddie says.

“No, I know that things don’t line up,” Richie says, “we’ve spent our whole lives going ‘oh, that doesn’t add up’ and then just blowing past it so our brains don’t explode and we don’t end up gibbering about clowns in straitjackets somewhere—”

“Rich, Ben was really good in school. Like, he was new, but he was really good in school. Bowers hated him because Ben wouldn’t let him copy off him.”

“So?”

Ben is one of those infuriating people to whom thought just seems to come easy—even when they were kids, even before the supposed divine intervention Eddie is suggesting. He just always knew the answers, he just knew how to build a dam and how to build a clubhouse and how to make load-bearing structures that would hold up for thirty years until he dropped in on top of it and basically played himself, down the line—nothing like Richie, who knew the answers as long as there wasn’t an exam in front of him waiting to be written on. Richie was always good in theory but in the moment of truth he fucked it. Ben’s parents never held up school papers in front of him and said _I just don’t understand, Richie_ and sent him to his room.

“So what the fuck was Ben doing in summer school?” Eddie asks.

Richie blinks once and then twice and says, “Do you think we have false memories? Like, the things we think we remember, that they’re fake?”

“No, I’m just saying—” Eddie shakes his head. “If we were forgetting I’d say that was It, and if the timeline were straightening out, I’d say that’s because we killed It and we’re getting everything back, but I don’t know why things don’t line up, I don’t know why I’m so _confused_, I don’t know what that place did to our brains and why I can’t remember what’s _real_ or not—”

Richie can see Eddie winding himself up, see his eyes sliding to the side as Richie becomes less of a listener and more of an audience (witness), and he reaches out and grabs Eddie’s uninjured cheek to reel him back in, saying, “Hey, hey.”

Eddie shaved in advance of getting on the plane, because of course he did, and he’s wearing a collared shirt because of course Eddie’s the kind of guy who dresses up to get on a plane, unlike Richie, who’s happy as long as he can get onboard without the flight attendants literally calling him out for being too drunk to fly. His face is smooth but Richie feels a rough patch of dried soap or shaving cream or something under Eddie’s jaw. He’s still surprised that Eddie can grow a beard, kind of.

“I’m real,” Richie says. “I’m real. And what you—” He gestures with his other hand at the car around them, and the airport behind them. “—what you see, and what you hear, that’s real. It’s over, and we get to trust our own brains again, okay?”

Eddie grins suddenly, cheek appleing up under Richie’s hand. “What’s that feel like?” he laughs.

Richie doesn’t have an answer. Come to think of it, Richie _did_ trust his brain and then Mike called him and revealed how wrong he was to trust his brain in the first place, and It spoke directly into his head so who’s to say—

The smile is sliding off Eddie’s face as his expression relaxes and—now Richie’s just holding his face. And this is—admittedly, something he’s done before, but he was saying something them, or making Eddie look at him instead of something horrific, and this is how it felt to be thirteen and to want but not know how to know it. This pressure at the front of his ribcage, the way his lungs don’t want to let him get a full breath (where’s the fucking inhaler when you need one?). Eddie’s face was always _cute_, he was a _cute_ kid in exactly the way Richie wasn’t (thanks, Beverly), but now he has a long face, long nose, long jaw, pointed chin, heavy brows, same eyes, long thin mouth. Mark he keeps slathering first antibiotics and now scar cream on. That and his lips the only color on his face.

Richie stares, slowly becoming aware that they’re staring at each other. _Is this it? Is this the inevitable? Is it going to happen like this, in the drop-off of the airport before he goes back to his wife?_ If this is the last time Richie’s going to see Eddie he should push his luck, he should take what he can get, he should lean forward—

There’s a knock on the window.

Eddie jumps and Richie drops his hand and whirls around.

It’s a state trooper. She points at the airport's sliding door and then taps the back of her wrist, miming a watch. “Four-minute drop-off, gentlemen,” she says, muffled through the glass.

Richie lifts a hand. “Got it.” He lets it fall again as she walks away. “Fuckin’ hate cops,” he mutters under his breath.

“Richie.”

Face turned toward the windshield, Richie just flicks his eyes sideways to look at Eddie, like he can hide or something.

Eddie says, “I’m coming back.”

“Okay.”

“No, really, I’m coming back. I’ll be there when they—”

“String me up and send me to Shawshank?” Richie asks brightly, leaning back in his chair. “Your job is to stand in the gallery and shout ‘He’s already hung!’ Got it?”

Eddie rolls his eyes and then he unbuckles his seatbelt. He moves weirdly, like he doesn’t know for sure what to do with his shoulders, and then he puts up both arms and leans across the seat to hug Richie. Richie blinks, a little taken aback, as Eddie’s chin digs into his shoulder.

“I’m coming back,” Eddie repeats.

“Okay,” Richie says. “I’ll be here. With bells on. Not saying where, though.”

Eddie snorts in his ear, and his breath whooshes across the back of Richie’s neck. A little shock goes down Richie’s whole spine. Eddie sighs. “Okay.”

Then he gets out of the car, goes to the trunk, and starts hauling his dozen bags over to the baggage check. Richie sits twisted in the driver’s seat as if he’s getting ready to back up, and if the state trooper comes back he’s probably going to let his mouth get him in trouble again, but he has an uninterrupted view of Eddie nervously shaking out his cards and putting up his hands to indicate the baggage person should be _careful!_ with the bags. And then, ticket in hand, Eddie turns.

Richie, who has never been a Boy Scout in his life, salutes with three fingers, cocksure and carefree.

Eddie gives him a sad smile, his mouth a line vaguely curled up at the edges and his eyes big and soft. He waves, and then he goes through the automatic door. Richie watches until he’s sure Eddie’s gone, and then he turns around and takes a deep breath.

He looks around for the trooper and, not seeing her, pulls away from the parking lane and drives toward short-term parking. It takes a whole loop around the airport, because fuck Bangor too, while he’s at it. He goes up into the parking garage and finds a spot, and then he parks but he leaves the car on.

He unbuckles his seatbelt and then claps to himself a little bit, trying to get it together, murmuring, “Okay, okay.” He stares at the little clock on the dashboard—Eddie wanted to get to the airport a full three hours early, because of course he did—little white numbers on a black background.

_Out of the blue and into the black._

“Okay,” he says. “I will… admit… maybe I overreacted the last time.” He keeps his voice low in case someone else bangs on the window and asks if he’s comedian Rich Tozier, talking to himself. “So if there’s something that I need to know—something you need to tell me—I’m listening. Okay? Okay.”

He reaches out his index finger slowly and taps the power button for the radio.

It takes a moment for it to come in—apparently the reception in the airport parking garage is not great, which bodes well for America’s air traffic controllers, doesn’t it?—but the next thing he knows—and he knew this would happen—Rilo Kiley is singing, “_—distant and you found him on the phone, pleading, saying, ‘Baby, I love you, and I’ll leave her, and I’m coming out to California.’”_

Richie freezes. He realizes he’s clenching his jaw so hard his whole face is aching, and he thinks he might be sick. But this is a good thing, isn’t it? This is a good omen, those exist in the world, they did magic when they were kids and why shouldn’t they again? Did the magic happen because It was in the world or did it happen in them like an immune reaction, like, like, like—

_“And your husband will never leave you, he will never leave you for me.”_

Richie stares at the radio, which is telling him that this is “Does He Love You?”, but it’s also telling him… it’s telling him…

Slowly, with his hands shaking, he turns off the radio. Then he puts his hands together over his mouth and nose and, secure in the knowledge that the doors are locked and he’s already fucking crazy, he begins laughing.

He laughs so long and loud that tears spill up out of his eyes and he’s slumped back in his chair, and the car is still on, the air conditioner humming away at him, and Richie finds himself saying, “Fuck you, fuck you! What do you want? Haven’t you had _enough_? Who _are_ you? _What are you?_” until he becomes aware his voice has scaled up into a scream.

And then the Voice comes out of him.

“The turtle couldn’t help us,” Richie says, but it’s not Richie.

Richie presses his fingers over his lips, startled. He doesn’t know what the fuck that means. He doesn’t know what voice that was. His throat hurts, and it’s not just because he screamed himself hoarse.

He takes a deep breath, lowers his hands, opens his mouth, and—

“I wrote you a letter,” the voice says with his teeth and tongue and throat and lungs.

Richie waits, but there’s nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you know how many times I had to rewrite Richie and Eddie agreeing to share a bed? They just _would not get in the bed_, and eventually I had to knock Richie unconscious and have Eddie making a decision offscreen.


	3. In All Seriousness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie Tozier makes a phone call. Eddie remembers who he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit, guys, I just wanted to write something fluffy about Richie and Eddie like, picking out an apartment in L.A. or something, and now this is happening. We'll get there, we're getting there, I swear, but first we have to talk about the nature of magic and the bond the Losers share, I promise, we'll get there!
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: Richie has some stress and fear about coming out, and he makes some typically-Richie distasteful jokes, but the big red flag here is Eddie's encounter with Myra. Myra's emotional abuse is domestic abuse, and she never raises hands to him, but if invasion of privacy is a big trigger for you, this scene is gonna be heavy. It made me kind of sick writing it, but this will be the last time we see her onscreen.
> 
> There's also a kind of uncomfortable scene where Eddie remembers watching Sonia go through the caregiving motions of Factitious disorder imposed on another (Munchausen's by proxy), which squicked me the hell out but Eddie kind of takes as par for the course, and it's nothing more graphic than making tea.

Eddie takes two hundred dollars in cash out of the ATM at the airport. Then he uses his phone and books himself a hotel room in New York. It’s not cheap, given the short notice. Eddie could, of course, have done a motel or somewhere out of town, but there’s still a screaming and panicked voice inside him insisting it’s not _hygienic_.

He lands in Laguardia, gets a taxi to the hotel, and drags his bags up. Only once he’s sitting in his room does he check his phone and take it off airplane mode.

His phone just about buzzes out of his hand as all the notifications come up: _Missed call, Voicemail, Missed call, Voicemail (2), Missed call, Voicemail (3)_… And of course:_ Myra Kaspbrak, Myra Kaspbrak, Myra Kaspbrak…_ over and over and over.

He should call, he should apologize, he should lie and say something about a flight delay, but he doesn’t. Instead he turns his phone over in his hand, puts it back on airplane mode, and walks down to the desk.

“I’m looking for a taxi company?” he says, though it’s not really a question.

The concierge directs him to corded phone and a series of business cards. Eddie selects one arbitrarily and orders a taxi for his home address, as soon as possible, please and thank you. Then he sits in the lobby to wait for the next twenty minutes.

He tests himself a little bit, scrolling up through the history of their group chat. Sometimes they go a full day without more than an “I remember you” from Bill. Sometimes it’s a cavalcade of candid photos—Mike with his shoulders hunched over a legal pad at the place he and Ben are getting breakfast; Ben with his first cup of coffee of the day, looking more heavy-lidded than usual; Richie attempting to lick the side of Ben’s face and Ben spilling said coffee to get away. Bev doesn’t take photos of herself, Eddie realizes. There are no portraits of Beverly laughing or looking canny and knowing. There’s one that Ben sent—Bev arm-wrestling Richie and Richie’s exaggerated throes of defeat—but Bev as the photographer only appears in group shots.

Well, that makes sense, Eddie thinks darkly to himself, because Bev loved Bill first if she loved any of them. Not in the way that they all loved Bill—turned toward him out of instinct—but in the way you expect puppy love between children. They were a matched set, he thinks, with their red hair, but—weren’t Bev’s eyes blue? Eddie thinks he remembers them—her with the slingshot in her hand, her hair like a crown around her head, and her eyes like chips of ice in her face as she covered her hand over the cup, daring It to call her bluff.

He shakes his head to clear it. He’s sure that Bev’s happy, mostly because he’s pretty sure Ben would jump off a cliff if it would please her. But Bev is—

Married. Bev is married. But she looked different when she walked in the Jade of the Orient than she does now. Her pretty clothes and her long sleeves and her quiet voice. This Bev—Bev of the bloodstained blouse, Bev reflected in the glass window, Bev with her mouth slightly open in a smile as she forces Richie’s arm down onto the table—that’s the Beverly Marsh Eddie’s mother didn’t want him to hang around with, in case she _dirtied_ him somehow.

He should have talked to Bev before he left. Said _How do you do it_ and _What about everything you left there? Your birth certificate, your passport, your social security card, the things that are important? What’s the protocol on going back?_

It would be so much easier to do this if Beverly had done it first, had modeled how it was meant to be done. Going alone has always scared Eddie more than (_almost_) anything else.

He checks the clock, opens up a text message just to Beverly’s phone, not the whole groupchat, and sends her a yellow heart emoji. Then he stands, checks his pockets to make sure he has his wallet and keys, and goes outside to wait for the taxi to pull up.

Richie suggests they get high.

“I’m just saying the smokeshow worked once—and I don’t mean Haystack over there, because that—” He points to Bev. “—is not the face of a woman getting the bare minimum.”

Ben turns bright red but Bev just grins, lifts her chin, and drops her eyelids. “Problem, Richie?” she asks.

“Nah, mostly just questions, like, how much weight did you lose in your dick? And do you miss it?”

“Richie,” Mike says. He wears disappointment very well; the librarian thing makes it extra convincing.

“I have changed my mind, I would like to resume drinking,” Ben says.

Bev grins wider and crosses her legs like a man would, high on her thigh. She’s wearing these wide-leg trousers and heeled sandals that make her look like she could step on Richie’s throat.

“Not missing anything,” she says innocently.

Ben opens his mouth in apparent astonishment, stares down at his own knees, and then just kind of looks torn between mortification and pride. It’s more positive reception than his communications tower is getting—and Richie’s brain automatically starts playing Mad Libs with ‘tower,’ trying to work it into a zinger.

“So if we smoke up,” Richie presses on. He has a point and he’s not going to let himself get in the way of it. “We were able to see basically all the dinosaurs die, right? I think we should do it again.”

“Why?” Mike asks. His brow is furrowed.

“To see—” Richie gestures uselessly with his hands. “—the stuff we can’t see now. The things that are going on but we don’t get a look at.”

Ben shakes his head. “Didn’t work for all of us last time.”

“And what did work was because of the magic,” Mike says. “The magic’s gone now.”

Richie blinks. “Are you sure?”

Mike grimaces but his eyes stay on Richie. “What’s happening?”

Richie puts his hands together. “I do not remember how many days we’ve been in this hotel,” he says. “I get up and I go to my court appearances and I tell Deaver every stupid thing I’ve done in my life and I eat food and come home. And for some reason, even though we’re all fucking middle-aged, we were able to have a never-ending sleepover without our skeletons literally revolting against us.”

“Um,” Bev says.

“That was a muscle and it’s because I just so many goddamn muscles,” Richie says. “Not the same thing.”

“It’s quality, not quantity,” Ben murmurs.

Richie points at him while still maintaining eye contact with Mike. “Thank you, Haystack. Legally you are now my personal trainer. Come on, Mike.” He narrows his eyes slightly. “The night we all stopped crashing together like a bunch of… college kids testing out their Hep C vaccinations. Did you dream? As soon as we stepped out of that room together, did you dream?”

Mike drops his gaze and shakes his head slowly, but it’s not a denial. “So we’re a little funny on the calendar while we’re recovering. That happens after traumatic events sometimes. You forget the details because survival is more important.”

Richie raises his eyebrows. “What did you see, Mike?”

The corners of his mouth move slightly, tugging down into a frown that’s there and then gone.

“I’ll tell you after your trial,” he says.

Richie stares at him. “Why? What’s the point in hiding it?” He turns around to Ben. “Did you dream? Or did the magical power of Beverly’s—”

Ben’s face hardens and he points at him and says, “Fucking watch it, Tozier.”

Richie holds up his hands. “—_hotel room_, John Wick, jeez. Did you dream?” He twists back around and gets a warning twinge from his side, which he promptly ignores. “Did you?”

Beverly’s smirk has vanished and her gaze is far away. She rests her hand on the end of the armrest, her fingertips lightly hanging over the edge. When she first showed up in Derry her nails were chewed down to the quick, but now they’re growing out white. She presses the fingers of her other hand to her mouth, contemplative, and then lifts her gaze up to Richie.

“Did you dream because of the deadlights?”

Like an anvil into the ocean, Richie’s stomach sinks.

“No,” he says firmly. “It wasn’t the deadlights. It was something else. And I had my paranoid moments in that room—the ‘am I gonna open the bathroom door and find half a kid tap dancing at me’ moments—but I didn’t dream. I didn’t have screaming nightmares in there.”

Tone softer now, Ben asks, “Are you having screaming nightmares now?”

_Wait and see, now Eddie’s gone._

“No, but they’re coming,” Richie says. “Despite popular belief I am a relatively sane person, and that’s how I know they’re coming.”

“I dreamed,” Bev says quietly. She sets her jaw and gives Richie her battle-ready face. “What do you want to do?”

“I think we should smoke up the clubhouse again.”

“No way,” Ben says, shaking his head.

“You can’t be that precious about it after—”

“If we go into the clubhouse, it’ll collapse,” Ben says finitely, like he's trying to close the book on this whole discussion.

Richie stares at him. “We were just there. Tell me you do a better job building skyscrapers.”

“The magic was holding it up,” Ben says. “It’s gone now. And even if it weren’t, I’m not going down there again.”

“The magic—” Richie feels his hands shaking with frustration. “The magic’s not gone. It’s not, it’s still around, and I don’t know what it wants, and I’m open to better ideas, guys!” He holds both his arms out, welcoming them to take a shot at him.

“The smoke should have killed us, last time,” Mike says. He takes a deep breath. “You and I got sick, but our lungs didn’t swell up and we didn’t drown in them. That’s what the magic saved us from. And—” He gestures to the room around them, counting the four of them in. “All of us tried last time. Stan. Bill and Eddie. You know we won last time because we were together, it’s the only reason we got out clean.”

Richie coughs a laugh. _“Clean?_ What about Bev’s psychic powers, huh? Or how about how hearing you name my goddamn hometown was enough to have me blowing chunks, which I now know is the same response I have to _actual murder_? Or how about the bug that got planted in Stanny’s head, huh? How clean was that if when it came to collect—?”

“No,” Ben says, tone no longer ending the conversation but absolutely crushing it to death. Richie jerks his head sharply to look at him. Ben’s face is hard and his eyes flinty, but that’s all he says.

Richie’s throat burns.

They didn’t fight like this in Bev’s hotel room in their nice little time bubble to get their heads screwed back on. But they should have, and do none of them really see it?

Mike says, his tone placating, “We’ll work out something else, Richie. But we’re stronger together. And that almost killed us with seven. I’m not gonna try it with four. Anything you want to do, we’re waiting until Bill and Eddie come back.”

Richie feels his arms fall at his sides, heavy. His lips work against each other for several moments, unsure whether to smirk or sneer or just throw on a classic Eddie Kaspbrak pout.

“What makes you think they’re coming back?” he asks.

Bev stands up so suddenly that Richie startles back into the bar. But she’s not angry, she’s suddenly just a soldier coming to attention.

“They will,” she says. “They said they would.”

Richie shakes his head and hates himself for the thought even as it occurs to him. He tucks his head down so he can look at her from under his glasses, and then he keeps shaking, slow, needing her to hear him even though he knows this is gonna cut, this is gonna bring the wrath of Haystack down on him.

Emphasizing each word, he says slowly, “So did Stan.”

There is a moment of quiet. _Moment of silence for Mr. Stanley Uris. We are gathered here today in spite of him._

“Call him,” says Ben.

Richie looks over at him, his head lolling with how tired he feels suddenly.

Ben is holding out his cell phone to him. “Call him right now. I have the international plan, you can take my phone and talk to him.”

_Oh_, Richie thinks. He meant Bill, sure, but he was thinking of Eddie. Bill’s a _can’t blame him_ kind of absence, but Eddie feels like a missing limb.

“What’s the time difference, like, six hours?” Richie guesses.

“Five,” Ben replies. Of course he knows that. His face doesn’t change. “Do it. Call him.”

Slowly Richie reaches out and puts his hand around the phone, but he hesitates to draw it away from Ben. “So just to be clear,” he says, “you’re giving me free license to take your cell phone and call Bill at three in the morning and run up your overseas charges.”

Ben’s mouth curves slightly in just the suggestion of a smile. “Talk to me when you want to call up Hong Kong.”

Richie gives a sarcastic little _well fuck me for clarifying_ nod at that, eyes wide, and takes the phone. He holds it up and says, “Fine, but if I find nudes on here it’s your own fault for leaving me unsupervised.”

Bev snorts. “That is one hundred percent not how that works.”

“Sure it is. You know me; you know the hazards of my operating system; there’s no _self-control_ brake switch in here. No take-backs.” He holds up the phone to make his point and then drops it into his shirt pocket.

“Taking it upstairs?” Mike asks.

“Yeah, I’m gonna try to pay Haystack back for the fees by charging Bill for phone sex.”

He leaves the room and goes up the staircase. It’s a real slog; the stairs seem steeper every time he climbs them, and he feels like he puts more and more of his weight on the banister, and he’s already destroyed one fancy old chair in this hotel. He survived the murderclown twice; he doesn’t want to die by falling headfirst through an OSHA violation.

Instead of going back to the room Ben and Bev have been sharing these last few nights, he goes all the way up to the room he booked under his name. Eddie’s gone, so nobody’s going to be walking in. He tries to ignore the emptiness of the minimalist furniture as he closes the door behind him.

Then he takes the phone out of his pocket and runs into the obvious obstacle. Ben’s phone has a passcode. Richie stares at it for a long moment, imagining walking back down all the stairs to get it, and then he realizes he can text Bev on his disposable flip phone to ask for Ben’s passcode.

Instead of doing that, he stares at the keypad. On a rare impulse towards logic, he types in _0-2-1-3_.

The whole screen shakes as it rejects the code. So not Beverly’s birthday, then.

Richie stares at it for a few long moments and then just about groans, “No, Ben, no no no…” as he types in _1-9-8-9_.

The phone unlocks.

Did Ben do that on purpose? He just got this phone, why would he choose that after they finally _killed It?_

Richie sighs and huffs out a breath, opening up Contacts and finding _Denbrough, Bill_. He taps on it and waits for the screen to go dark, and then he puts the phone to his ear.

The dial whines, thinner and higher-pitched than he’s used to. He’s not sure if that’s because of the overseas thing or the model of phone or if the satellite his call is bouncing off of has just been puffing helium.

Just when he thinks Bill’s going to do the sensible thing and ignore his phone in the middle of the fucking night, the dial clicks off and there’s a shuffling sound. Then Bill asks, “Ben?” He sounds wide awake and concerned.

Richie blinks once as the Voice shifts into his mouth, smoky and self-abashed and quietly confident. “Mr. Denbrough, is your refrigerator running?”

It’s not a bad approximation of Ben’s voice, for a first try.

Bill is quiet for a moment and then he says, “Richie?”

“Damn,” Richie says. “I thought I had a good one there.”

Bill sighs heavily into the phone as in relief. “I don’t know what I thought that was. Is everyone okay?”

Richie slumps across the room toward the bed and works a hand under his glasses to rub at his eye. “I mean, we’re all how you left us. ’Cept Eddie, he went back to New York today. But this isn’t—” He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “—it’s not the_ Houston, we have a problem_ call. Sorry to wake you.”

“Nah,” Bill says. “It’s all right.”

“How’d your wife like your phone ringing at three in the morning?”

Bill huffs a laugh. “Dunno. I’m on the couch.”

Richie whistles. “What, your smooth talking ain’t getting you anywhere?”

“My smooth talking is getting me into regular therapy sessions and out of institutionalization,” Bill says. “For some reason when I started talking about a dead little brother I’d forgotten about and a scar that magically reappeared on my palm, my wife thought I was having—”

“—a nervous breakdown,” Richie finishes. He remembers the awful blinding empty feeling of walking out on stage and forgetting his own damn name. “Yeah, that’s a problem for future me too. Once Bowers is done fucking me over one last time.”

“Audra’s pretty understanding or she’d be saying ‘a psychological break,’” Bill replies. “You okay, Rich?”

“Yeah,” he says. He leans back on the bed. “Yeah, I need a favor, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you say ‘institutionalization’ to me one more time? Maybe like, lower your voice an octave and really _scrape_ along the last syllables?”

Bill snorts into the phone. “So you’re doing just fine, huh?”

Richie puts a hand over his mouth and gives a long exhale into it, so his breath fogs up his glasses. Then he takes his hand away and says, “Hey, now you’re back home. Is your stutter gone?”

“I mean, for the most part,” he says. “Every time I catch myself tripping up—like, uh, ‘rem-m-member,’ that’s one I fuck up on—”

“Ironic,” Richie observes.

“Yeah. But the more self-conscious I am about it, the worse it gets.”

“And if I were to ask you, say, what was your favorite color when you were a kid, you would say…?”

He hears half a smile in Bill’s voice. “Silver. You just testing me?”

Richie considers for a moment and then says, “Nah. I just wanna know—” He tries to put his thoughts in order.

Bill isn’t stupid. He knows this isn’t a crank call. He waits.

“You, like, got it together after you left, man,” Richie says. “You got it together and you turned into—into _William Denbrough_, instead of Stuttering Bill. You, like, grew out of all the shit that Derry did to you and you walked away your better self.”

Bill says nothing.

“But like, after you left—this time, not this last time—has it stayed gone?”

There’s another pause, but Bill is clearly putting his words together. After a long moment, he says, “I don’t know if I know what you mean, Richie.”

Richie huffs a laugh through his nose. “I, uh. I thought it was, like, you, me, and Ben. We got out and we changed, and it was for the better. But Mike called and I blew fucking chunks and then I went out on stage and I tried to introduce myself, and I couldn’t, because I’d stopped being Rich Tozier. That’s what Derry does to me, man, I stop being myself and I go back to being _Trashmouth Tozier_, it’s like all the safety brakes come off and I’m just—just like I was when I was a kid, I’m so fucking annoying and I can hear myself being fucking annoying and crossing the line and I cannot stop, Bill, I cannot stop running my mouth.”

Bill makes a quiet, noncommittal, “Mm.”

“So I wanna know—the person that Derry makes you. When you go away, does that go away too? Do you get your life back? Do you get to be a fucking adult again?”

He hears Bill sigh slightly and then shift the phone around. He imagines Bill pinning it against his shoulder and tilting his head, like they’re on their backs in the grass in the Barrens staring up at the sky again, their heads inclined slightly toward each other, red and black.

“You know how stuttering works?”

Richie blinks twice. “I’m familiar," he says dryly. He has what they call _observational experience_.

“So I knew what I wanted to say the whole time,” Bill says. “It was like I couldn’t get it out of my mouth. You wanna talk about safety brakes, my mouth was a big old brake stopping me from saying what I needed to say, what people needed to hear, and it would get stuck and I would try to pry it up and—_no one_ would let me get a word in edgewise, watching me grunting and spitting there, not adults or kids or even _you_, Richie. It was.” There’s a clicking sound as Bill swallows. “There was a lot of me, but it was all packed way down. And after It, and after we fought It and we defeated it that once, it was like—it was like when we were fighting It, and that was the only thing that mattered, I was enough right there in that moment. There wasn’t too little of me all packed down trying to get out, I could do what had to be done. And then afterwards, I was—the brakes were off. I stopped being, like, crammed down inside myself, and I could just…”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Yeah.”

Because what Bill’s saying is the opposite of Richie’s problem. Richie’s problem was that he was always just_ too much_, and growing up was the process of getting a leash on his trashmouth and trying to make it work for him. Not putting himself into a box, but trying to get a harness on it and make it drag him where he wanted to go, which was _away from Trashmouth Tozier._ Away from _Richie_ and toward _Rich_.

He takes off his glasses and lets them sit on the bed next to his head. Then he covers his eyes with his free hand.

Bill says, “I don’t think I changed, really, Richie. I think I was always there, and I just couldn’t get out. And now—look, I write now, I communicate words to people and a lot of people seem to like what I’m saying, and when I’m good at it, when I know I’m in the zone, it’s because I’m putting down just enough on the page. It’s just enough. I'm finally _reaching_ where I need to. I, like, learned and got better, but it’s always been me.”

Yeah. Yeah, it’s always been Big Bill Denbrough. He can say he never got a word in edgewise around Richie—and there are a thousand people out there who never got a word in edgewise around Richie—but he had his moments. When he spoke, every Loser turned their head toward him and listened.

Richie laughs and then quickly buttons his mouth shut to keep anything else in.

“You okay?”

He laughs again, just quietly this time. “So I told Eddie that when we get out of here we can go back to trusting our own brains. And he was like, _Gee, Richie, what’s that feel like?_”

Bill hisses a little in sympathy.

“’Cause Eddie didn’t change. I mean, Mike didn’t change either, but he never left, but Eddie—he was just like I left him, you know, like nothing changed at all, and I was hoping that it was because of Derry, because this place turned us back into who we were, but I don’t think it is. I think he just—stayed who he was, out in the world, and I don’t want that, Bill, I don’t want to go back home still stuck as this little kid, I can’t do it, I can’t just never be myself again—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Bill says. Richie falls silent—of course he does, Big Bill is talking. “Trashmouth Tozier saved our lives.”

Richie just takes a couple deep breaths and pretends like he’s not about to cry into the phone.

“No, you did—the Voices hurt It, and you—what did you tell It, in the end? During the—during the ritual?”

Richie chuckles wetly to himself and switches voices, dropping into his broadest southern drawl: “Oh, honey child, sometimes I lie.”

“You had It. You had It right there, and begging for mercy, and you—you can’t lie in the ritual, Richie. Did you realize that? When it talked about—about the turtle—”

There’s a pain building over Richie’s orbital socket.

“I don’t know about that,” Richie says. “I don’t know if I believe that old turtle’s really gone.”

“It couldn’t lie,” Bill insists. “It was telling the truth, and It couldn’t lie, and you could, because the Voices let you. And that was just you, Rich, that was exactly what we needed right then, we couldn’t have made it out without you. I couldn’t have done it, but you were just enough, because of who you are.”

Richie’s not gonna get a better opening than that. He feels his stomach flip over. Bill’s safe to cut his teeth on, he’s far away.

“I gotta tell you something,” he says.

“Okay.”

“And if you don’t like it, that’s fine, like, you don’t have to come back to the trial if you decide you’re done with me after this.”

Bill says nothing.

Richie takes a deep breath and says, “I’m gay.” Something tugs in his chest as he lets it go, and it hurts enough that he has to blurt on. “And It knew. Liked to rub that in my face—_don’t let them find out, Richie, don’t let them find out, don’t touch other boys, Richie, or they’ll find out your dirty little secret—_”

“Don’t fucking do that voice,” Bill snaps.

Richie falls silent.

“Don’t give It that,” Bill says. “We killed It. Don’t… don’t give It a Voice.”

He takes a deep breath. “You think it works like that?”

“I’m just saying, don’t fuck with it,” Bill says.

Richie takes another deep breath and lets it out. It feels like he’s fresh off climbing those stairs, like he ought to be panting with the exertion of saying two words to Bill Denbrough.

“You get any mail, back at home, Big Bill?” He hits the Bs hard, exaggerated, like he doesn’t give a fuck that Bill hasn’t addressed the big rainbow elephant.

Bill is quiet. Then he asks, his tone suddenly wary, “Why?”

Richie feels himself waggle his eyebrows, though there’s no one there to see it. “’Cause talking about giving a Voice, I think someone just committed Grand Theft Me to talk to me this afternoon, and I think I know who it was. So what’d you get.”

It’s not a question because he knows that _why_ meant _yes, and I’m scared_.

Bill pauses to take that in. Then he says again, slowly, “I’ll tell you after your trial.”

A spike of fury drives Richie upright on the bed. He pounds his fist down into the mattress and his glasses leap into the air and then crash back down.

“After my fucking trial—you and Mike, not wanting to talk about it until after my fucking trial—like any of this is waiting for what’s _convenient_ for me, like any of this stops when we put it on hold for the _criminal justice system_, like Bowers ever held back when we were running from It or It ever did anything but make Bowers worse, like, what am I supposed to do in the meantime—?”

“I’m not shutting you down because I think you can’t handle it or something,” Bill says. “It’s from Stan, you know it’s from Stan, but if he wrote me I bet he wrote the rest of you too. And I’m not gonna spoil you getting t—t—t—”

All Richie’s anger suddenly freezes, listening to Bill stalling out. He pats the bed with his free hand, feeling for his glasses, and jams them on to his face.

“—t—t—_fuck!_ To hear it from him,” Bill says. “It’s not mine to say, Richie, I don’t know what he said to you.”

“What did he say to _you_?”

For several moments Richie hears nothing but his own faintly panting breaths.

Then Bill says, “Maybe I don’t want to tell you that right now. Because it’s mine.”

Richie’s mouth pops open in surprise. “After what I just said?”

“Yeah, Rich, there’s no _quid pro quo_ on the last thing your friend said before he killed himself. I’m not saying _never_, I’m saying _not right now_.”

Stung with humiliation, Richie tries to appease himself. “After my trial,” he challenges.

Gently, Bill says, “Yeah. After your trial. When you can get home and check your mail your damn self. _And_,” he adds, voice changing back to his laying-down-the-law tone, “we can talk about it after your trial. Because I’m still coming back to be there for you.”

Richie’s breath catches in his throat. It’s an embarrassing little sound, and he just knows that Bill heard it. He scoots his glasses down his nose and rubs at his eye again. “So did I wake you up or what?”

He chuckles. “Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been staring at a blank screen for hours?” Bill asks, suddenly conversational and self-deprecating again. Like they’re two old buddies, calling each other to shoot the shit.

“Oh, are you bored? I’ve got a whole two-hour set I never got to deliver since my tour’s cancelled. But my writers don’t know shit about me, so if you ever want to try scripting me…”

Bill laughs. “Sure, I’ll write for you. But how many children terrorized by monsters am I allowed to put in one standup routine?”

Richie grins. “I think seven’s enough.”

“Just enough,” Bill agrees. “Eight would be…” He falls silent.

Richie tries to think back about other kids they hung out with—they were there, surely? Now he’s an adult if he actually had six friends on hand in L.A. to hang out whenever he felt like it, he’d consider himself a unicorn among jaded overworked forty-somethings. Was there really never any thought of an eighth? Was it so impossible? Did they know, right off the bat that it had to be just them?

And then he remembers Georgie.

“You remember him now, Bill?”

“Yeah,” Bill says, and then clears his throat. “Yeah, I don’t think he’s going away again.”

“Kids,” Richie says almost nonsensically.

“Yeah,” says Bill. “Kids.”

Eddie goes home.

He gets out of the taxi and stands on his own front step with his keys in his hand, ready to unlock the door and still some five hundred miles away in his head.

Over the last few days he discovered that Richie, despite both looking like a grown-ass man and having moral obligations to be that grown-ass man, somehow made it this far in life without operating a hotel keycard correctly. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s the drinking—admittedly cut back now he’s appearing in court on the regular and his lawyer had a lot to say about visible hangovers—or if it’s the impatience, but it takes Richie a good two or three tries to get a green light out of the electronic lock and get into his own hotel room.

Eddie got fucking sick of this pretty damn fast and reached out to take the keycard from him, saying, “God, you’re so stupid, just let me do it—”

Richie tried to hold the card out of Eddie’s reach and put it in the door at the same time, which mostly amounted to bodily trying to hold Eddie away from the door with a hand on his forehead and his whole back and shoulders in the way. “I’m fucking doing it, it’s fine, just hold your fucking horses, shortass—”

“You are not doing it, you’re a hazard to society, and you’re holding me up.” Eddie reached around Richie’s middle, half ducking under his arm and reaching out for the key as the lock flashed red at them and made an angry buzz. “See? You’re inept.”

“I’m in something all right, and that something is your mother,” Richie said. “Do not make me elbow you in the face, Kasp—” Eddie got his hand over the back of Richie’s and sank two fingernails in the web of skin between index and middle finger and index and thumb. Richie hissed out a startled _“Hah!”_ and whipped his hand back.

Eddie took the keycard.

“Jesus, Edward, you gonna fucking pull my hair too?”

In the middle of putting the keycard back in the lock, Eddie had a sudden blindingly clear vision of what that would look like, to gather up Richie’s overlong black hair just starting to curl in his hand and haul back on the crown of his head. His face flushed.

The door lock shone green at him and pinged happily. There was a click as the bolt disengaged and slid back. Eddie pushes the door open and walked through without acknowledging Richie. They were squabbling like kids on the playground, that’s all, so Richie named something else kids fighting on the playground do. It’s Eddie’s fault for twisting it up in his head. Ever since the kissing bridge Richie doesn’t flirt with him—flirts with Mike, flirts with Ben, flirts with Bev—but it’s like he knows now that Eddie will take it seriously, and Richie doesn’t want to be serious.

Now Eddie’s outside his own front door with flags of heat coming off his cheeks in the early-fall air. Stupid, he thinks, he needs to focus, he cannot walk in there cracked open and vulnerable and dwelling on hurt feelings. He’s alone, and so he’s got to protect himself, because nobody else is there to do it for him. Nobody’s there who’s going to grab him tight and drag him out of harm’s way.

_Stop it_, he tells himself, resisting the urge to blot his face against the blush. He tightens his fingers around the key. The narrow metal head presses into the palm of his hand. _This kills monsters_, Bev said, _if you believe it does_.

Eddie opens the door and walks in. He closes the door behind him without worrying about being quiet—not slamming it, but not sneaking in and hiding either. He’s not going to creep around his own home like he did something wrong—well, he left and he—

_No_, a voice like iron says in the back of his head. _You were right to go. You didn’t mean to hurt her, but you didn’t do anything wrong._

He straightens his back and walks calmly up the stairs.

Immediately he hears shifting in the kitchen, into the quiet. Myra says, “Eddie?”

“Yes, Myra,” Eddie says. He knows she heard him fumbling with the key. She could have met him in the doorway, but she didn’t. All the lights are off upstairs and the light is cool gray and dark brown in places. He opens the door to his study.

Myra’s footsteps are heavy as they ever were as she comes out of the kitchen and down the hallway. It is unkind to think it, but she shakes the house. Eddie’s sure their neighbors can hear it when she thunders around—

_Not thundering. Storming,_ he realizes. The thing that calls attention to Myra isn’t that she’s fat, though there are plenty of fat people in the world, it’s that she’s upset, and she wants him to know it.

As a kid Ben Hanscom just about shook the ground when he walked, and then he opened up the ground and dug out a clubhouse, and he smiled, and Eddie was never repelled by him. Ben appeared like a godsend in his hour of need, stumbling into the water all bloody, but he forgot about it completely when he saw Eddie couldn’t breathe and Bill couldn’t leave him by himself either. If all Bill needed Ben to do was take up space, then by god Ben was going to take up space, solid and real and _Eddie was not alone._

“Eddie!” Myra repeats. He hears her ascending the stairs.

“Yes, Myra,” he says again. He opens up the bottom drawer of his desk but he doesn’t sit down to rifle through the hanging files; he stays on his feet and searches all the way to the back, opening up _Important Documents_.

There are a number of stiff white cardboard envelopes inside. He takes them out and reaches into the bottom of the hanging green folder to find his passport, which is sitting where he left it because he didn’t need it to board a national flight. This he sets down on the desk for a moment as he opens up the envelopes.

Myra appears in the doorway; he hears her hand hit the doorframe behind him. “Eddie, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Paperwork, Myra,” he replies.

His documents are combined with Myra’s, laid in their envelopes in matched sets, except for the passport. Myra doesn’t have a passport, and she hates flying anyway—and it’s hard to blame her for that, when the seats aren’t built for her, and you can’t expect a person to just conform to these arbitrary standards of what a human being should look like, the dimensions someone should fill, the expectations someone should meet. She raged about it the few times Eddie had to travel for work, and it wasn’t hard to be sympathetic to her argument, only to listen to her talk.

Eddie slides the birth certificates, the social security cards, and the marriage license out of their envelopes. He picks up his, leaving Myra’s on the desk for the moment, and puts them in one now-empty envelope. After a moment’s consideration he takes the marriage license too. He tucks Myra’s documents away in the envelope and sets that one back in the hanging folder.

“Paperwork—_paperwork_, Eddie, do you know how worried I’ve been? You’ve been gone for _ages_, and right after you had that _car accident_, and I can’t believe I let you go—you probably have _a concussion_, and _whiplash_, and what if you’d _died_?”

Eddie is glad that he no longer has to wear the gauze patch over the wound on his cheek. Even at the angle he’s standing at, with his back to her, she’d be able to see it, and that would be something she descended on.

“I’m fine, Myra.” He takes out the envelope that holds the certificate of ownership to the house and the car titles, and he takes out the paperwork for Myra’s car and puts that in the third empty envelope, and puts that back in the hanging folder. 

“You’re _fine_? You’re _fine?!_ You could have called and told me! You didn’t say where you were going, you didn’t say when you were coming, you didn’t say when your flight was getting in—I could have picked you up at the airport, Eddie, you must be so tired, you should probably lie down, it’s early…”

“I’m not tired, Myra.”

“You’re not tired? You’re not tired? _I’m_ tired, Eddie, I’ve been up and worrying about you for weeks, I’ve been up all night waiting for you to come home, and you won’t even _turn around and look at me!”_

Eddie’s fingers skip down the tabs of the hanging folders, pulling out his W-2s, his tax returns, each clearly labeled. The tax returns, meticulously collated by his accountant (Stanley Uris should have been Eddie’s accountant, would have been able to put Eddie’s life in order), are in their own rich green pocket folders. How many years will he need to take with him? The IRS says seven for securities, right? Can he walk out of here with seven folders?

He picks up _2009_ through _2015_ and sets all the others on top of the desk. Then he pulls the hanging folder out of the drawer and puts the seven folders and everything else he’s gathered into the pale green (_green like Bev’s eyes_) folder. Only then does he turn around and look at his wife.

She is flushed red with fury, her mouth puckered into a cherry in the center of her soft round face. Her eyes behind their round glasses are fixed on the file in Eddie’s hand, and her chest rises and falls with deep breaths under her cardigan.

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” Eddie says calmly. “There are some things we need to talk about.”

_Mistake_, he feels as soon as he says it, because if _they_ need to talk then Myra gets to talk, and Eddie knows how it goes when Myra talks, she wears him down.

Her nostrils flare and she looks up from his hands to his face. For a moment she seems to visibly swell with rage, filling the whole doorway, and Eddie has a panicky moment of _will she even let me out of this room?_

Then she glares at him and says, “_I’ll_ say there are some things we need to talk about, Edward Kaspbrak, _I’ll_ say there are.” She releases the doorframe and turns away, stomping furiously toward the stairs again.

He knows she expects him to follow her, to trail along in her wake, but he pauses just outside of the study to glance sideways into his bedroom. Is there anything in there he wants? And if it doesn’t fit in the file, how is he going to sneak it out with him?

_Don’t sneak_, that cold voice says in the back of his head. _If you creep in screaming at everything you crash into, you’ll never get out of here. You’ll be too tangled and cut up to leave._

Myra is still muttering as she descends the stairs. “You’re _sorry_ that I’m _not feeling well_, as if you had nothing to do with it, as if this whole thing isn’t _your fault_.” She raises her voice slightly to call back to him as he approaches the landing. “The _least_ you can do is have a cup of tea with your wife, coming in like this and _ignoring me_, it’s practically _abusive_ is what it is…”

Eddie’s whole spine turns to cold metal. To steel.

And Eddie hates tea.

Tea wasn’t medicine, growing up, but Sonia Kaspbrak brewed tea religiously. There was something alchemical about watching her spoon great golden masses of honey into the cup, watching her knead lemons on the countertop or the kitchen table before cutting them in half and grinding them against the juicer. There was ritual to it, every time Eddie came home with a sniffle or a faint cough from dry air at school, or even the faint scratchiness in his voice that appeared when his voice started dropping—it was, “Oh, Eddie, you need a cup of tea with plenty of lemon and honey, that’ll _soothe_ your sore throat.” And if not _soothing_, there was something hypnotic about the process, the boiling water, the careful unwrapping of tea bags from the paper sachets that kept them clean. Eddie would sit at the kitchen table and stare, and she would turn down and set the _perfect cup of tea_ in front of him and say, “There you go, drink it while it’s hot.” She would then lay out her hands on the table and sigh, looking at her cuticles and wrinkled fingertips, “My poor hands. But it’s worth it, Eddie, you need it, you can’t trust that juice from concentrate, you don’t know what they put in it. It has to be _fresh_, Eddie, otherwise it’s not clean, and lemons are so cleansing.” She smiled. “Drink up.”

Eddie says, “I’m not thirsty.”

At the base of the stairs with her hands on the banister, Myra turns around and scowls at him. “I said it’s the _least_ you can do.” And then the lemon face softens into the honey, and her tone goes plying. “And it’s been _so long_ since I’ve seen you, Eddie, just let me fuss over you a little and make sure you’re okay, I’ve missed you so much, I’ve missed taking care of you, it’s only natural for a wife to miss her husband.”

“I don’t want tea,” he says firmly. “We can talk while you have tea, but I won’t be drinking.”

Her expression sharpens and she turns away from him, moving down the hallway. He can see her in profile. “You won’t be _drinking_,” she hisses as she goes. “You won’t be _drinking_. You’re right, drinking’s so _unlike you_.”

Eddie follows her into the kitchen. There’s still clutter and paper and mail on the table, and loose tissues mashed into balls, as though Myra’s been crying a lot in his absence. Eddie surveys it impassively, his file still held in his hand, until he sees the stack of mail.

One of the envelopes, with its contents laying open across it, is from the car insurance company. It details the investigation into the car accident Eddie got into after he heard from Mike, and their ruling that he was at fault, and what they’ll pay and what he’ll be expected to pay from now on.

Under that spread piece of paper is another envelope. He can only see the upper left-hand corner, but there’s a sticker in place of the return address, and the portion he can see says _Mr. & Mrs. Sta, _and then just a fragment of the _n_.

Myra continues to slam cabinet doors and thump dishes onto the countertop.

Eddie reaches forward slowly, as if in a dream, and picks up the insurance notice to add to his file, envelope and all. With it out of the way, he can see the envelope beneath it: the one from _Mr. & Mrs. Stanley Uris_ to_ Eddie Kaspbrak_.

It’s opened. The envelope is torn at the top. Slowly Eddie fits his fingertips between the folds and flicks it open so he can see inside, but the envelope is empty.

His heart, which has been pounding steadily while he ascends stairs and steels himself to confront his wife, begins twitching a little harder in his chest.

“Myra,” he says, “where is my mail?”

She stills. “Your mail?” she repeats.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, my letter. My letter right here—” He grabs the empty envelope in his free hand and turns to look at her. She keeps her back to him. “My letter from the Urises, Myra, where is it. What did you do with it.”

“Oh, your mail,” she says, turning around. Her face is calm now, her eyebrows lifted slightly as she looks at him, her mouth still drawn tight into that little red blot. “You want to know where your mail is.”

His breathing is coming faster and he doesn’t feel cold anymore, he feels like the inside of his chest is boiling. “Yes, Myra, where is my letter. You opened my letter while I was gone, and it was addressed to me and not you, and I want to know where it is. Right now. _Right_,” he repeats, when her eyelashes flicker a little bit, “now, Myra.”

_Careful_, he thinks, looking at the way her brows contract. _Careful. Don’t lose your head._

“How _dare_ you talk to me like that. I am your _wife_, Edward Kaspbrak, and everything that’s yours is mine too. How _dare_ you try to keep secrets from me, and come in—” She moves around him to cross the kitchen, and Eddie takes half a step back to keep the distance between their bodies. “—come in at all hours, like you have no accountability to anyone, no _responsibility_ to anyone, let alone your _wife_, talking about _paperwork_, of all things. _Paperwork._ You want your messages? You want your paperwork? I’ll show you paperwork.”

And she jerks one chair out from under the table, reaches down, and pulls a stack of paper off the seat. This she throws down onto the table between them, triumphant.

It is, Eddie realizes, looking at it, a transcript of text messages. In fact, every text message he’s sent since he got the new phone in Bangor. And of course, they’re all to the group conversation among the Losers—Bill’s regular _I still remember you_ and Richie’s emojis and Ben’s calm chagrined _We have to stop drinking so much_ and Mike’s comments about Bill’s books as he reads through them and, from Beverly, just the words _picture message_ over and over again.

Slowly he raises his eyes to Myra. She’s just about trembling, standing there with her hands on her hips, elbow to elbow filling up almost half the room, and her jaw is set.

“I got them from the phone company,” she says. Her voice is low and vehement. Eddie realizes she’s shaking not because she’s scared—not because, like she wants him to think, she’s scared, but because she’s furious. She is so angry with him she can’t hold still. “I got them from the phone company because you weren’t answering my calls, Eddie, you stopped answering my calls, and I thought, _my Eddie knows my number, he could have called me from any phone, so what does he need a new phone for_? And now I know. You left me so you could run off to Maine, and you and these_ sick men_ met up with this _dirty woman_ who sends you_ dirty pictures_ and doesn’t so much as _call you by name_, Eddie, that’s who you left me for, that’s who you left your wife to go see, that’s what you did to me—!”

And she bursts into tears.

Eddie stands there, his hand on the back of the other chair. He looks from her crumpled face back down to the printouts of his conversations. He doesn’t even see what he sent in return; he stares at them and all he can think of is—

Stan the Man had a guide to birds of North America.

That was his token, more than the shower cap, no wonder the ritual Mike set up didn’t work when they tried to burn a plastic shower cap, Stan the Man had a guidebook to birds of North America. And when it cornered him in the water tower, he held it up like a cross and started shouting the names of birds.

Myra has just laid an inventory of the best friends Eddie will ever have in his life down on the table between them.

And Stan had done it again, had called on that book to repel It, to hurt It, screaming, “I believe in—!” and naming all those birds Eddie can’t remember, doubts he could have remembered word for word even when he was thirteen and it was happening, but invoking them hurt It. Stan spat them out between him and It, bird by bird by bird, and said, “—and I even believe in the golden eagle, _but I don’t believe in you!”_

Eddie slowly reaches out and picks up his guidebook to the Losers Club of 1989. As Myra cries, he opens up his file folder—which is all a jumble inside, no matter how he tried to keep it together, but it’s going to have to do, Eddie’s just going to have to push through—and places the packet of messages inside with the pages detailing all that he is and all that he owns.

He believes in Bill and Ben and Beverly and Mike and _Richie_ and even Stan the Man Uris, but he doesn’t believe in Myra or her tears.

“Myra,” he says.

She takes her hands off her face and looks up at him, startled. This isn’t how it goes—Eddie’s breaking the rules, he’s supposed to be capitulating, supposed to be apologizing for making his wife cry, for making a woman cry when he’s a big strong man and he’s supposed to be kind to her.

“I’m leaving,” Eddie says. “I’m going to divorce you. And if you won’t respond to the summons, I’m going to separate anyway, and after a year that’ll be grounds on its own. I’m not going to fight you for the house or your half of the money, those are things you’re entitled to, because I agreed to marry you.”

She’s staring at him like she’s never seen him before, and maybe she hasn’t. All her tears have stopped, though the ones still on her face are running down her cheeks toward her chin, and her nose and lips are still blotchy red.

“But I’m taking my car,” he says. “And I’m taking the things that are mine, and that means a bank account in my name only, Myra, that means a new phone number you won’t be able to reach me on, that means no more fooling around trying to issue lawsuits in my name, that means I’m taking the things that are mine and they’re not for you anymore, Myra, and that letter is mine, so where is it.”

It’s not a question. It’s a demand. Eddie doesn’t make demands, but it was eventual. He had to, at some point, and now’s when he needs it. He can tell her the way that it is, the way that it’s going to be, but he has to demand his letter back, has to demand the last thing that Stanley said to him.

Myra’s lips wobble. “You can’t,” she whispers. It’s plenty loud enough in their kitchen. “You can’t—you can’t—you can’t _leave me_, Eddie, it’s not safe, you _need me_, you’re not thinking straight, I knew you were hurt, Eddie, I should never have let you go, it’s _that woman_, she’s turned your head, but it’s not your fault, Eddie, because that’s how men are, and all you need to do is stay at home and it’ll go away, you’ll stop thinking about her, you’ll remember how good it is to be taken care of, you’ll remember—”

_“Myra.”_ Eddie almost doesn’t recognize the voice that comes out of him. He strings out the words with emphasis, all falling in order like birds on a telephone wire. “Give—me—my—letter.”

Her nostrils flare as she breathes in with an audible hiss, like the kettle heating on the stove behind them, forgotten. Her chest expands, all fury.

“No,” she says.

Eddie blinks once, slowly, and then turns to leave.

He hears her lunge for him across the table, hears the kitchen chair overturn, hears garbage go scattering onto the floor. He keeps walking—quick and smooth, not giving her a chance to grab hold of him. If they’re done with the pretense than they’re done with any sense of safety, and Eddie has to go, has to go _now_.

“—can’t go, Eddie, you _can’t go_, it’s for your_ own good,_ Eddie, I _burned_ that letter, it was talking about _suicide_ and _suicide’s contagious, Eddie_, I was _protecting you_—”

He opens the front door with his left hand and steps out, his file under his right arm.

He hears Myra literally thud into the walls as she comes down the hallway after him.

“—Eddie, if you go I’ll call the police, Eddie, you’re not well, _Eddie_, _please_, you’re sick! You need to be in the hospital, you can’t go, Eddie, I’m scared for you, _Eddie, I’m scaaaaaaared—_”

He slams the door behind him with more force than he should.

He walks down to the street and then to the lot behind the row of brownstones where they keep their cars. He opens up his car—the crumpled passenger-side door—and throws the file into the passenger seat, closes the door, and buckles his seatbelt.

He puts the key in the ignition. First the engine purrs, then growls, then strains as it turns over.

Eddie lets his head fall back into the seat, feeling the muscles in his shoulders and thighs go tense and tight at the same time, and then the car starts and he relaxes. His heart is pounding—not like a rabbit or something little and scared, but in the rhythm that you hear when the highway is clear and you’re just cruising down it, and your tires turn over and over and over.

He takes a deep breath of the leather interior smell, then turns to look behind him and back his car out of the space. It responds to him with no hard feelings over the accident, sliding away from the cars on either side of it and out into the open space.

He pulls out of the lot and onto the road and the world opens up around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I don't know how fast a phone company will get back to you with a transcript of all your messages, and I don't remember the movie well enough to identify Eddie's car and exactly what damage was done to it (I'm waiting on Tumblr to spit that out for me), but this was the scene and it couldn't wait.


	4. In Memoriam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie gets a verdict. Eddie gets ready for the rest of his life, whether he knows it or not. Richie takes a long-distance phone call, to catastrophic effect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It got weird, guys. It got so weird.
> 
> BIG HONKING TRIGGER WARNING FOR EMETOPHOBIA THIS CHAPTER. Richie pukes just as like a default stress response, I've decided, and he's very stressed! Also, typical mention of racial prejudice (you think Henry Deaver is just gonna stand by and not stand up for the only black man in Derry, Maine? Nah, son), of Bowers's numerous attacks on the Losers, and of Stanley's suicide.

It starts raining in Derry.

Not enough that you’d notice it, just enough spitting to annoy everyone and to frizz and curl everyone’s hair. Came out of nowhere, ayuh, wasn’t a cloud in the sky when the sun came up, and nothing on the weather channel or the radio or anything. Out in Bangor by the courthouse it’s dry dry dry.

Richie Tozier gets a verdict today. Are you ready?

Bill Denbrough walks into the courthouse.

Richie immediately stands up, turning around and leaning toward the bar between the defense and the gallery, but Henry Deaver grabs him by the shoulder.

“Keep it quiet,” Deaver says. “Don’t be a spectacle.”

“I’m a spectacle in spectacles,” Richie replies seriously.

“Well keep it_ quiet_,” Deaver says. “Keep it between yourself and your friends, and I don’t care how close you all are, you watch what you say to them.” He lets Richie go.

Richie goes to the gate and walks through. It’s a little courtroom, nothing spectacular, nothing _A Few Good Men_ even though the jury can’t handle the truth. He reaches out for Bill at the same moment Bill reaches out for him, and when they hug Richie’s glasses slide sideways, off balance on his ear.

Bill thumps him on the back. “How you doing, man?”

Richie realizes he’s shaking and leans into it. “B-b-better and better, Big Bill.”

Bill huffs a breath and pats the back of Richie’s head with an open hand, careful and gentle, and then steps back to say hello to each of the Losers in turn.

Bev is already there reaching out for a hug. “How’s Audra?” she asks, voice barely above a murmur.

Bill’s hug is heartfelt but careful, and very aware of Ben standing in line for his own greeting. “She understands. What I told her about Richie, anyway. She understands. I told her I’d be here and back, just have to tie up loose ends.” He releases Bev and says, “And then she and I are gonna go away for a little bit.”

Bev smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, we’re in post-production now, she’s been working hard, she’s earned a little time off. And I don’t think movies are right for me, you know. I think this was a one-and-done deal.” He holds out his arm for Ben.

Ben does the businessman’s handshake and then smirks an _as if_ kind of smile and moves in for the hug. “You know where you’re gonna go?”

“Not yet,” Bill replies. He crosses both arms over Ben’s back in an X, his nose just resting on the shoulder of Ben’s nice suit jacket. He makes eye contact with Richie—bright blue eyes and that white streak high up on his forehead where his hair starts. It's easy to forget when looking at him that of the group, Bill stands shorter than everyone except Bev, and Bev's built like an actual doll. “Mike made Florida sound pretty nice, but I don’t know.” He visibly steadies himself on Ben and then lets go and hugs Mike.

“Hey, we could go together,” Mike says. “There’s one of the space race museums down there, right? Might be nice to walk into a museum just for fun. Think you can talk Mrs. Denbrough into that?”

“Into meeting my old friend?” Bill asks, slightly muffled; Mike is a full head taller than him. “Yeah, I think she’d be game for that. We’ll buy you dinner.”

“It’s a whole evening.” Mike steps back, and the Losers slot into the row behind Richie to show their support, and they wait.

Richie stands there as long as Deaver will let him, and then he has to go sit back in his seat and wait for the closing arguments.

The prosecution gets up first, speaks of long grudges and Richie’s extremely publicized moment of crisis just days before Bowers’s death. They speak of Bowers’s mental incompetence, of the testimony of several staff members and psychiatrists from Juniper Hill, and of the fact that Richie had no idea what Bowers had done before he walked into the Derry Library and saw him on Mike. They speak of the vulnerability of the mentally ill in this world, and they basically paint Richie as someone who viewed Bowers’s life as expendable.

It is uncomfortable. Richie’s used to being the center of attention, but he doesn’t like the stares of the jury, their unsmiling mouths.

“Regardless of every event that came beforehand, the defendant’s actions indicate a frightening idea in our society—that in the effort to subdue, any means are acceptable, even by a civilian. That because of Bowers’s long childhood trauma and his years of imprisonment, his life was no longer worth anything. That because he was alone for so long, no one would take notice. It is your duty, as the jury, to take notice and to say that this is not acceptable—not in Derry, not in Maine, not in any society of humans working together. Justice itself is represented by a scale, and nothing outweighs a human life. It is your duty, as jurors, to say that the defendant owes a debt that can only be balanced by atonement for what he’s done—your duty to find this homicide unjustifiable as it is and to send the defendant to the consequences of—”

The door to the courtroom squeaks open. They should oil that shit. Richie feels all the hair on the back of his neck stand up but he looks at Deaver, who is watching the prosecutor like a hawk and shows no sign of turning around to look.

Whoever comes in, they move sideways along the courtroom and slide into the front row. He hears Bev’s soft intake of breath—“oh!”

Then Eddie whispers, “What did I miss?”

His words climb up the length of Richie’s spine. Not daring to turn around, Richie covers his mouth with his hand, feeling himself go rigid.

Deaver mutters, “Put your hand down.”

Richie puts his hand on the table. Deaver presses down on Richie’s shoulder, trying to get him to bring those down as well.

“Closing,” Ben whispers back. “This is it.”

The prosecutor gives a slight nod to the judge and says, “The state rests. Thank you for your time.” She buttons her jacket as she returns to her seat.

Deaver draws in a deep breath as the judge says, “Mr. Deaver, the defense’s closing remarks?”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Deaver stands and walks around the table, and while he’s between Richie and the jury, Richie whips his head around to glance at the Losers.

Eddie is sitting at the very end of the row, next to Ben, and is hunched forward against the gate. He looks like he’s watching a sports game. His hands are steepled in front of his mouth and Richie sees a flash of brown as Eddie glances back from Deaver to make eye contact with him.

Richie turns back around quickly, his hands still on the desk. Slowly he lowers his hands to his lap, leans back in his chair, and releases his held breath.

“While the prosecution acknowledges a devastating epidemic in our society—the subduing of violent and nonviolent suspects with use of brute force and without regard to restraint or consideration—in this trial, that is completely without context. We have already heard at length the circumstances under which Mr. Richard Tozier discovered his friend, Mr. Michael Hanlon, under assault in his place of work. We understand that Richard Tozier was not acting as a law enforcement officer, or as someone who knew that the deceased had recently escaped from the institution that had been his home for the last twenty-seven years, or under the knowledge of the additional assault Mr. Bowers had committed that day. Richard Tozier saw his friend, a beloved librarian and one of the community’s few black residents, under attack from a strange man, and acted to repel the deceased’s violence and defend Mr. Hanlon’s life.

“You have heard from Mr. Hanlon about the acts of violence the deceased committed toward him, his family, and his property during their prior acquaintance. You have heard that Mr. Bowers savagely attacked not just Mr. Hanlon, but also witnesses Edward Kaspbrak, that day, and Benjamin Hanscom, years ago. You have heard that not only did the deceased use the knife to commit grievous bodily harm in his escape, but also for malicious intent. You have heard Mr. Hanlon say, ‘I really believed he was going to kill me.’”

Deaver takes a step to the side and holds his hand up, his thumb and forefinger touching to drive his point home.

“A black man alone in an empty room in Derry, who had already suffered racially-motivated violence at the hands of this very assailant. ‘I believed he was going to kill me.’”

Deaver lets his hand fall and takes a step away, drawing the jury’s gaze back toward Richie. “Now, I agree with the prosecution’s sentiments about what we owe to each other, as people living together in a society. And furthermore, I’m sure you see that Richard Tozier acted in exactly that spirit when he acted to protect his friend, with no regard to his own safety. He walked in, saw that Mr. Hanlon’s assailant was already dangerous, and without any thought to his personal safety, or any consequences that would come from his actions, or the trial we have all been part of these last several weeks, he did the only thing he could do to protect the vulnerable.

“You have heard that this encounter falls under Maine’s castle doctrine. That the deceased was acting unlawfully when he escaped Juniper Hill, and therefore when he entered Mr. Hanlon’s place of work. That he surprised Mr. Hanlon, so there could have been no provocation or instigation for the attack. That Mr. Hanlon and Richard Tozier believed that the deceased intended to kill Mr. Hanlon there, in the Derry Public library. That the surviving witnesses from the Juniper Hill facility heard Mr. Bowers state his intent to ‘kill them all.’ That, per the state of Maine’s principle on use of force, Richard Tozier acted to stop unlawful and imminent use of deadly force on Mr. Hanlon.

“It is therefore your responsibility, as members of the jury, to recognize the immense distress that this whole experience has caused the defendant. Richard Tozier never set out to kill anybody, unlike the assailant. He has been sickened by the cost of human life, and by the trauma Mr. Bowers’s actions while he was a fugitive from justice caused not only him but also his closest friends. But there was nothing else Richard Tozier could have done to save Mr. Hanlon’s life. And because opposing counsel brought up the value of a human life—I urge you to recognize not just what that day cost Richard Tozier, but also what he saved.”

Deaver steps back, folds his hands, and makes eye contact with the jury. Some of them stare back; one of them has their head tilted slightly to the side. Then he turns to the judge and says, “The defense rests, your honor.”

The court finds in favor of the defendant.

Eddie thought _of course they will, they’ll have to _when he was talking himself into leaving his car and going through the metal detectors into the courthouse, but knowing it and hearing it are two different things. Richie’s whole body goes slack in his chair when the foreman says it, and Mike keels over in his seat with his head on Bill’s shoulder. Suddenly Eddie can feel his toes again.

The court adjourns. Richie’s lawyer stands up, shakes the prosecutor’s hand, and begins packing his things. Richie, suddenly all sprawling limbs again now that he’s no longer held in suspense, leans over and says something to him that Eddie doesn’t hear. The lawyer nods, and Richie turns around and climbs over the railing without waiting to go through the gate.

“Your back! Your back!” Eddie reminds him, his hands half-up like he can hold Richie off.

Richie’s heavy with relief when he hugs Eddie, like he was in the quarry just kind of slumping on top of him. “No, _you’re_ back,” he says. “Jesus, Eds, way to make an entrance.”

“I didn’t make an entrance, I was trying not to make an entrance, I didn’t want to distract the jury if things were going well.”

“What were you gonna do if things were going badly?” He releases Eddie from those long arms but still leans on Eddie’s shoulder as he turns toward the rest of the Losers. “Dress in drag and do the hula?”

Eddie ignores him and reaches over to grab Bill’s hand with both of his. “Missed you, Bill,” he says, and then pushes his forehead into Bill’s chest.

Bill’s hand pats Eddie’s hair. “Missed you too,” he says. “How did it go?”

Richie stiffens.

Eddie tries to ignore it. “Fine. It went fine. I would have been here sooner but I had to stop to sleep, I wasn’t…” He shakes his head hard, trying to clear it.

“What about me?” Richie asks. “Did you miss me?”

“You don’t let anyone miss you, Richie,” Bev says, and then belies her own statement by reaching out and hugging him too.

Richie turns his head, looking for something, and Eddie follows his line of sight to see the lawyer coming around the gate.

“Best of luck to you, Mr. Tozier,” he says, holding out his hand. Bev slides her arms off Richie so he can reach out and return the handshake. Then the lawyer turns and shakes Mike’s hand, too. “You really going to Florida?”

Mike laughs, a little dazed. “I mean, it’s on the list.”

“Well, try not to need a criminal defense lawyer while you’re there,” the lawyer says, and then he goes.

Richie glances around, sentrylike. Eddie becomes aware that they’re all gathering in as close an approximation to a circle as they can in the narrow row. Confidentially Richie ducks his head and says in an undertone, “All right, Mike, this is as many of us we’re gonna get. Are you ready now?”

Mike’s face turns serious. “You don’t want to wait? You don’t think we’ve done enough for today?”

Richie shakes his head. “I wanna get it out now. And fast.”

“What are you talking about?” Eddie asks.

Richie shakes his head again and then his eyes flick to Eddie. His face softens suddenly, determination instead of apprehension. “Not here, Eds.” He looks back up at the rest of them, scanning across the group. “Back to the Townhouse. Right now.”

“Don’t you have, like, legal shit to do?” Ben asks. “Things to sign?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. Let’s go. Eds, are you in my car?”

Eddie pulls his head back, affronted. “I drove here.”

Richie stares at him with his mouth in a line for several seconds and then reaches for his pocket. “Right. New plan. Who drove here?”

“Mike, Bill, you, Eddie,” Bev says.

Eddie feels what’s about to happen and his stomach twists in dread at the idea of them splitting up.

“Cool. Beverly Marsh, you’ve just won a new car!” Richie says like a TV entertainer. He plunks his keys down into Bev’s hand. “Try not to fuck in it. It’s a sexy car. Eddie knows.” Then, as if hearing himself for the first time, Richie freezes and flushes bright red.

“Does he?” Bill asks, his expression amused.

“Fuckin’ do not, what’s your problem, Trashmouth?” Eddie growls.

“Are we going?” Ben asks. He picks up his suit jacket and slings it over his shoulder, looking more cover model than ever. “If we’re going, we’re going, but is everyone ready?”

“Try to stay together,” Mike says. “Try not to get separated any more than you have to.”

“Stay with your buddy. Mike, you get Bill, because you’re the responsible one.” Blush fading, Richie reaches out and claps Mike twice on the shoulder, then begins shuffling sideways out of the row of seats.

Getting out of the courthouse is just annoying. They don’t have to go back through the metal detectors, at least, but there’s still a bottleneck of people at the door to the courtroom and then at the three or four doors out of the Penobscot County courthouse. As soon as he's out in the open air Richie takes a moment to tilt his head back in the early rain, letting it spatter his face and run down his glasses. In the parking garage Bill, Eddie, and Richie peel off from the other three, and then Bill goes to his own rental car, and Eddie has to lead Richie to where he parked. Richie is taking up too much space again, half looming over Eddie and half stepping on his heels as they go.

“What the fuck, Richie?” Eddie demands.

Richie holds up his hands and takes half a step back. “Sorry, sorry. Just not convinced you’re not gonna just _whoosh_ out of here.”

“I might, what the fuck was that in the courtroom, they’re gonna—” He feels himself blush as he says it but he keeps his eyes forward, counting the signs designating what zone they’re in. He lowers his voice in case anyone hears him. “—they’re gonna think we fucked in your rental car.”

There is an uncomfortable pause, although maybe it only seems that way because Eddie is desperate for Richie to charge in with a stupid comment so that’s no longer hanging in the air.

“They’re not,” Richie says. “They know I’m too stressed out to have gotten any in the last—” He seems to count for a moment, going quiet, and then shakes his head and says, “Well, not while I’ve been a guest of the state of Maine, anyway.”

Eddie does not need to think about the last time Richie had sex. Eddie does not need to think about Richie having sex at all. He focuses on the immediate concern: “What are we rushing back to the Townhouse for, anyway? Why aren’t we all getting on planes and going back home?”

A weird sound happens that takes Eddie a moment to identify as Richie rubbing his hands together. “I’ll show you in a minute, Eduardo, let’s go.”

Eddie unlocks his car and is climbing into the driver’s seat when Richie taps on the passenger-side window. The smashed door won’t unlock. Eddie leans all the way across and tugs the door open, and Richie scrunches down and into the seat.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” he says. “Very aerodynamic.” He frowns and then reaches down between his knees to push his seat back. Eddie closes his door and waits with his key in the transmission, watching Richie sliding back and stretching out his legs.

Richie realizes he’s being watched and looks up. His face is a little crazy, a little half-wild, despite his orderly hair and nice suit. “What?”

Eddie raises his eyebrows.

Richie blinks and then reaches out to close the door. It’s mostly uninjured on the inside—bless modern engineering—and it latches shut just fine. Richie’s eyebrows lift in turn, all _was that it?_

Eddie waits another moment of Richie staring blankly at him and then says, “Your seatbelt, Richie.”

“I’m gonna put my seatbelt on, jeez, you think I outlived all _this shit_ to die in a car accident?” Despite his griping, he reaches out and grabs the seatbelt, then ducks his head as he buckles it. “I’ve got a big fiberglass reminder of your driving skills right here—_ha_,” he interrupts himself.

It’s Eddie’s turn to be nonplussed. “What?”

“Of course you drive stick,” Richie says. “What did Bill used to say? _Hi-ho, Silver, away?_” He gestures for Eddie to get on with it.

“It’s_ hi-yo_ Silver, it’s from _The Lone Ranger_, hi-ho’s from _Snow White_, and what the fuck does _of course_ I drive stick mean?”

“Nothing,” Richie says innocently, which means he’s a big fucking liar.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Richie, you know how long it took me to get here? I slept on the side of the road. Sure, I’ll drive you back to your hotel room, this is Eddie Kaspbrak’s taxi service, why the fuck not?”

He gets them on the road. Almost as soon as they’re out from under the shelter of the parking garage—Eddie pays for his stay in cash, wincing to himself as he does so, because he hasn’t called the bank yet about a new account—the rain comes down on the windshield. It was almost dry when he crossed the border into Maine, and was only drizzling when Eddie got into the courthouse, but now it’s true rain.

“Oh, visibility,” Eddie moans a little, leaning forward in his seat and adjusting his lights, putting the windshield wipers on.

Richie gets that hell-bent look back on his face and starts fidgeting. Not the usual fidgeting either, not the performative, and not the drumming either, but his feet and knees shifting in the footwell.

“Can you stop distracting me, I’m trying to get us out of here,” Eddie says without looking at him. “Shoulda asked Bill what he’s driving.”

“You ever listen to the radio, Eds?”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says. “Let me get on the highway at least, first, before you start messing with the radio. I don’t like this rain.”

Surprisingly, Richie obliges. He rolls his knee back and forth and picks at the hem of his suit jacket and starts unknotting his tie, little by little by little, but he doesn’t touch the radio.

“What, you got ants in your pants? What?”

“It’s a fucking python,” Richie says. In lieu of anything else to fidget with, he loops his tie over and around his hand, wrapping the silk around his palm.

“I don’t think you even know what a python is.”

“Well why don’t you call my fucking bluff, Spag-eds?”

Eddie rolls his eyes and turns them onto the highway.

Almost immediately Richie jackknifes up, reaching out toward the radio. “Do you use this often?”

“No, in the city you should have as few distractions as possible to stay alert.” The windshield wipers flick back and forth across Eddie’s field of vision.

“Know what channel it’ll be left on?”

“No. You can search if you don’t like what you hear, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I’m not gonna like what I hear, and it’s got everything to do with you, watch,” Richie says. He jabs the power button for the radio.

Eddie waits.

Nothing happens.

Richie pokes the power button again, this time slower and more deliberately. “What kind of weird car do you have here?”

“It’s not a weird car, it’s just like the room key all over again, _Richard_, and if you break my damn radio—”

Richie rolls his eyes and says dryly, “Oh, sure, say my name, it’s hot.”

Eddie’s lower jaw snaps shut with a click and he stares out the window.

The sound of the rain on the roof of the car and the windshield drowns out the sound of Richie relentlessly pushing the button over and over again. At first Eddie just thinks it’s raining harder and harder, but then he realizes that the sound is the crackle of radio static coming from the speakers all around them.

“Richie, stop—”

The feedback coalesces from background fuzz up into a pointed shriek that sounds more human than electronic. Eddie jerks in surprise but holds the wheel steady; Richie flinches back and claps his hands over his ears.

A voice on the radio says, _“—fucking stop!”_ and then the whole thing dies, even the low electronic hum of a powered-on appliance.

Eddie sits there with his heart hammering under his breastbone. After a long moment of silence, with only the background noise of the driving rain, he manages, “You broke my fucking radio.”

“Does your radio _read your thoughts_?” Richie asks, incredulous. He lowers his hands, staring at the dashboard.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I mean, that was not interference, that was someone telling me to _fucking stop_ with the goddamn radio, and I hope to hell it was you, Kaspbrak.”

“I told you to stop with the radio—”

“Yeah, but did you tell me psychically through the airwaves?”

“Are you actually _insane_?” Eddie demands. “Is that why you’ve been going around killing radios? Are you hearing voices?”

“No,” Richie says. “I _am_ voices, I _do_ voices, I don’t hear them.” And he folds his arms and holds unnaturally still for the rest of the drive.

The Losers cram back into Bev’s hotel room.

The bed is modestly made—probably Ben, since no housekeeping has touched Richie’s room in the whole time he’s been here, though occasionally they now see someone attending the front desk; and it’s not Bev, because Bev’s suitcase is lying open and things are just thrown in there with the tags still on. Bev is secretly a _slob_, and Richie is borderline gleeful at this discovery.

“So, so so so,” he says, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

They form almost a circle in the room, with Bev and Eddie up on the ends of the bed, Bev with her legs up under her like a kid, Eddie with both ankles and arms crossed, scowling. Ben sits within reaching distance of Bev, and Mike on Richie’s left, and Bill on Richie’s right.

“Who dreamed, as soon as we were out of this room. Huh?”

Eddie goes white suddenly with betrayal, and then his face flushes. Richie pretends he doesn’t see it and keeps looking around at the circle.

Bill says, “I did.”

_Thank you, Big Bill._

“I was on the plane,” he says. “I dreamed—I don’t think it was It, or a memory. It was—” He shakes his head. “Something that didn’t happen. That I hope isn’t going to happen. But it felt… familiar.”

Richie nods and turns his head to look at Mike. “Sharing is caring, and my trial’s over. Cough it up, Hanlon.”

Mike narrows his eyes. “What did you dream?”

“I dreamed of blood coming out of the fortune cookies,” Richie replies without hesitation. “And Bill was bald—” Bill frowns, reaching up and touching his own head as if to make sure his hair is still there. “—and Bev had miles of Rapunzel hair, and Eddie was a blond and wearing my glasses, and the turtle spoke to me. Well, not a turtle, _the_ Turtle.” He waits politely for a moment to let that all sink in, and then he says, “Now you.”

“Careful, Richie,” Eddie says quietly.

Mike hesitates for a moment, his lips slightly parted, and then he says, “Bowers got me.” He blinks once, then adds. “It was night, for some reason. And you weren’t there. And he stabbed me in the leg.” His mouth stretches slightly between a grimace and a rictus smile. “Stabbed me in the leg. I had to make a tourniquet, and I had to get on the phone, but Pennywise was on the line. He wouldn’t—” His mouth works again and he draws in a breath through his nose; Richie can feel the rising fury coming off him. “—wouldn’t _allow me_ to hear anyone else.”

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t _allow them_ to see, to hear, the real thing. Richie doubts very much that all the dead children of Derry showed up outside the bandstand to see the Richard Tozier All-Dead Rock Show Reunion Concert, but he has no doubt that if he hadn’t outrun the Paul Bunyan statue it would have smashed him into the ground, just pulped him right there. Turned him into bone mulch, if that's a thing.

Bill licks his lips, staring down at the floor. Ben’s eyes are averted off to the side.

“I dreamed,” Bev volunteers. Her voice is quiet. “I was running through Derry, and something was chasing me. It was chasing me, but not as Pennywise or as anything I’d ever seen before. I had to climb under a Dumpster to get away, and when it finally gave up—Bowers got me.”

She reaches toward the back of her head, where her hair is still twisted up in the chignon she wore in court, and tugs it free. Her hair doesn’t spill out so much as it slowly gives up and curls around her shoulders in asymmetric flips.

“Something that happened, or something that didn’t?” Richie asks her.

She blinks once. “Something that didn’t. I cut my hair, that summer. There was nothing to grab.”

Richie points at Bill. “Something that didn’t.” Himself. “Something that didn’t happen.” Mike. “Didn’t.” Skips Ben to point at Bev. “Didn’t happen. Not memories. Something else.” He could go right or left, but his hand shakes slightly when he means to point it toward Eddie. He points back to Ben.

Ben blinks at him slowly. “One time,” he says calmly but with a thread of iron under his tone, “my high school gym teacher told me I wasn’t getting bullied because I was fat. He said I was getting bullied because I was fat_ in my mind_.”

Richie stares at him, not sure what to make of this. Slowly he says, “I love you as much as the next guy here, Haystack, but you were fat in real life, too.”

“Yeah, I fucking know,” Ben says flatly. “That guy.” He shakes his head. “That’s how I lost the weight, eating salads and running to beat that fucking guy’s track team, because fuck him.”

“Hear hear,” says Bill, raising an imaginary toast.

“That’s what I dreamed,” Ben says. “A memory. Something that actually happened. What’s your point?”

Richie bits down on his lower lip and turns to Eddie. His crazed giggling; and now that Richie's seen Eddie on the witness stand, he's pretty sure he knows what Eddie was dreaming about.

Eddie basically confirms that when he looks back at him and says flatly, “Actually happened.”

“Fine,” Richie says, looking down at the floor. He tucks his pointing finger into his fist and drums on the carpet, thinking. Then he says, “I think Stan’s talking to me.”

Eddie goes stiller than still. His eyes widen.

Bill, who has heard this before, just nods. “What happened?”

Richie brings his left hand up over his face, hooks his pinkie finger under his lip, and resists the urge to chew on his nails. “‘The turtle couldn’t help us,’” he quotes, but he’s not trying; he swallows and pulls Stan the Man into him, trying to find a voice where there’s no voice to be found. “The turtle couldn’t help us, I wrote you a letter—” Passing through into things he remembers Stan saying, his voice climbing up and down trying to find the right spot. “No, Richie! She’s not hot!” Hitching breath in, putting a little bit of a wail into his voice, “You left me.”

Bev recoils and Richie keeps staring down at the floor, trying to find it.

“You left me,” he moans. “You took me to Neibolt.” Dropping down flat again. “I hate you.” He holds it, holds the memory of Bill’s _I deserve that_ pout in his mind’s eye, and then he breaks, just like Stan did, grinning. “The turtle couldn’t help us, I wrote you a letter, I don’t, I don't feel like a man, I’m a loser. I know I’m a loser. I’m a loser, and I always fucking will be—_thanks for showing up, Richie.”_

He feels his eyes pop and his shoulders climb up to his ears and his whole body clench up around it, his throat closing. Everyone stares at him, he can feel their eyes, he’s the center of attention.

He feels his stomach give one great kick, and he catches himself, slaps his hand across his mouth, holding it together.

“Whoa!” everyone shouts, and Ben is saying, “Trash can, trash can,” and Bill is hauling Richie up and dragging him back into the bathroom. Richie’s stomach convulses again and he chokes, mouth filling with acid. Bill throws the shower curtain back and Richie drops to his knees, hands on the edge of the porcelain bathtub, and pukes.

“Jesus,” Bev says in the other room, and someone’s running the bathroom sink behind him.

Richie closes his eyes and focuses on holding his glasses to his face so they don’t drop in the vomit. It’s worse than the stress puking, worse than stumbling through a security door with alarms going off and hanging over the edge of the fire escape; it’s worse than staggering away from Bowers, making a fucking pun, and then blowing chunks on a wooden floor. All of a sudden he’s come down with the flu, his whole body aching and his ears ringing and the roots of his teeth pulsing. There’s something hard in his throat and he thinks it might be his trachea.

“Okay, okay,” he hears, and someone slides his glasses off his face. Something cold presses to the back of his neck, hands lifting his hair out of the way.

His body seizes twice, coughing up nothing, and he gags and swallows against the impulse. Once he can get in a shivery breath, all the strength goes out of his body and he slumps against the bathtub, temple to the porcelain.

A hand lifts his sweat-damp hair off his forehead. Richie opens his eyes hazily and Bill is staring back at him; Bill adjusts the cold washcloth on the back of Richie’s neck.

“You’re okay,” Bill says calmly, and if Bill Denbrough’s saying it, Richie believes it. He closes his eyes. Water runs from the washcloth where Bill’s grip squeezes it down into the collar of the nice shirt Beverly picked out for him. Richie gasps a little, trying to get his breath back. “Did that happen last time?”

“Sure—” His voice comes out no louder than a snake farting. He gulps and tries again. “Sure fucking didn’t.”

“Here,” Eddie says. There’s a dripping sound and then someone presses another washcloth to his forehead.

Richie takes several deep breaths, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. “Don’t know what Stan sounded like,” he mumbles.

“That was Stan,” Mike says from somewhere behind him. “I spoke to him on the phone, that was his voice.”

“It shouldn’t work like that,” Bev says. “That’s not how it works, is it, Richie?”

“It does if you believe it does,” Eddie says. “You know that, Bev.”

Yeah, but it’s not in Bev’s hand like a weapon she can hold up, so Richie’s inclined to cut her a little slack.

“Is it still you in there, Rich?” she asks. “Did it go—did he go away?”

Richie gets his legs back under him and pushes himself up; the weight of Bill’s hand relaxes, the washcloth slipping a little down the back of his neck, and then there’s an arm under his shoulder helping him up. He gets to his knees, bracing his hands on the bathtub, opens his mouth, and thinks, _Come on, Stan the Man, come on, Stanley Urine, is this the best you can do?_

“Is this what you do now?” Richie’s mouth says without his permission. “Do you just puke all the time, is this you?”

And then Richie seizes up again, dry heaving and sputtering into the bathtub.

“Shit,” Bill says, holding Richie’s head up.

Richie spits once into the bathtub and goes slack again, all his weight between Bill’s hands on his skull and his spine.

“—reception,” Stan mutters, and then says clearly, “Eddie.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks.

“Eddie.” That time, Richie doesn’t know who’s using his mouth. Stan wants Eddie over here, Richie wants Eddie over here, they’re in agreement, it's fine.

It's not fine.

There’s a barely-there touch in Richie’s back, between his shoulderblades. Then fingers scrape through his hair at the crown of his head, nails scratching at his scalp.

Richie says, “Ah,” half in relief, and his stomach tries to rise again. He swallows bubbles of saliva, opens his mouth again, and hears himself say, “She didn’t really burn it.”

Eddie’s hand tightens in the roots of Richie’s hair and Richie, in turn, white-knuckles it on the edge of the bathtub as a spike of tension he’s too sick to ward off goes through his whole body.

“Shit,” Stan says, “don’t do that. Hey,” Richie interrupts, the sound of his own voice made slippery by acid, “if you don’t like it, pick another body.”

“Am I watching _Psycho_?” Ben says, incredulously.

“Fuck off, Haystack,” Richie says. There’s a strange feeling on the back of his tongue while he and Stan wrestle for the controls, and then he yields and lets Stan say, “But I wrote the same thing to all of you. I meant it. The blood oath.”

“Stanley,” Mike says. “You fulfilled it, man. You’re here.”

“Yeah, well, this is worse,” Stan says. Richie has no idea what that means—worse than what? What is this? Riding double in Richie’s larynx? “It’s the blood oath, or I would never have been able to get back, and I had to do that, had to make you all swear to me, because I had to know you would come back even if I didn’t. I put _you_ between _me _and _It_, guys, and I’m sorry for that.”

There’s a sudden peal of thunder from outside, sharp enough that the lightning strike has to be nearby. Richie had almost forgotten it was raining.

“We forgive you,” Bill says. He’s allowed to speak for them, and it’s the truth, and he’s the only one who’s been checking his mail lately, so no doubt he knows what Stan said.

Richie swallows once and says, “Well, I don’t, and not just for making me—_beep beep, Rich, there’s no fucking time._” His stomach clenches, not with nausea but with fear.

“Time for what, Stan?” Bill says urgently.

“Get out,” says Stan. “I’m putting me between you and It this time, guys, but I can’t hold it for long, you have to get out—” And then Richie resumes his _The Exorcist_ impression, body bowing and Eddie recoiling and Bill holding him up.

“We killed It,” Ben says behind them. “We killed It—didn’t we kill It, Stan? Didn’t we?”

Richie’s hand slaps into the far side of the bathroom wall, against the tile, and he can’t help because his stomach is doing its best to drag itself and all his other organs out his throat.

“—_out—_” Stan gasps, around Richie’s retching. “—get out, get out, _run_.”

But Richie can barely stand. Every time his body seizes his field of vision goes dark at the edges, and he can feel his eyes bulging and drool hanging from his mouth, and Bill letting go of his neck and getting his other arm under Richie’s chest and holding him up that way, too. And then Richie feels his knees go weak, and himself sag, and Bill have to catch him, and at least the pressure in Richie’s head eases when he feels himself slip under.

Eddie has a good long moment of baffled staring once Richie passes out, but then Bill turns around and says, “Mike, can you get his other side?” Eddie steps back out of the way as Mike comes in, sliding an arm under Richie’s right shoulder and wrapping it around his back, and Bill is lifting Richie up by his left.

“Right,” Bill says, “r-r-right,” that little drag on the first consonant that makes it almost sound like a _w_, or like he’s growling. He starts giving direction. “We’re running. It’s bad. Mike, we gotta get him out of here.”

“Put him in my car,” Eddie says.

Bill looks over Richie’s shoulder and lolling head.

Eddie moves around them and, since Bill has no hands free, lifts his keys to show them to Bill and then pokes them into the hip pocket of Bill’s jeans. “Put him in my car. I’ll get his stuff.”

“Where are we going?” Bev asks.

“The airport,” Eddie says, and then blinks. He didn’t know he was going to say that. He touches his own throat and when he looks up Bill is looking at him, but that’s the only thing that happens. It’s Eddie’s own deep knowledge, not Stan leaping out of him the way he leapt out of Richie, the way that Bev knew how to shoot and Ben just knew how to build. “We have to go to the airport. Take his car again.”

“Are we all going to the airport?” Ben asks. “Are we going someplace specific from there, or are we all going home?”

“We need to leave together,” Eddie says with certainty; he just knows. Some of the coldness from the day before with Myra comes back into him—steel cold, not fear cold. He shivers anyway. “We need to leave together, because if we split up to leave town—”

“We’re weak,” Bill agrees. “And we don’t know what Stan’s doing to hold It off.”

“I thought we killed It,” Ben says again. “We were right there, it didn’t happen like this last time.”

“Even if we didn’t kill It, It’s supposed to rest for twenty-seven years between—between sounders,” Mike says, stumbling over the last bit. “We’ll be seventy before we know, if we even remember.”

“I believe in Stan,” Eddie says, and then realizes it’s nonsensical and feels himself flush despite the urgency in the room.

“Eddie’s right,” Bill says. “We can figure out what it is later, we just need to do what he says now.”

“How—” Bev’s voice comes out as a squeak. She coughs slightly and tries again. “How do we know it’s Stan? It’s not the first time—not the first time that It’s appeared as one of us.”

Eddie feels his chest rising and falling as he stares between her and Bill, and Richie remains in a slump.

“Too late,” Bill says. “Can’t take the risk. Ben, you close the bills. If you need help, you can take my card—it’s in my wallet, Eddie, can you…”

Bill wears his jeans tight enough now that Eddie knows full well Bill’s wallet is in his back pocket, and he’s sure it’s only because Eddie just stuffed his keys in Bill’s pants, but his face still flames.

“I won’t need it,” Ben says. “I got it.”

Bill nods. “Bev, take his car. Mike, we’re gonna get him down to Eddie’s car. Eddie—” He looks back up at Eddie. “Can you go up and get his bags?”

Eddie flounders for a moment and then says, “His key. I need his key.”

“Is it in his wallet?” Bill asks.

“I don’t know.”

Bill fumbles for a moment, shifting Richie’s weight on his shoulder and trying to get his hand in Richie's pocket. His eyes flick up toward the ceiling and his brow furrows.

“I’ll do it,” Eddie says, because watching Bill Denbrough suck at being a pickpocket is annoying enough to stand up against how little Eddie wants to shove his hand in Richie's pants. Bill shuffles slightly back as far as he can against the bathtub to make room. Eddie reaches out for the edge of Richie’s suit pocket and pulls the fabric open as gingerly as he did Stan’s envelope yesterday. He can see the corner of Richie’s wallet—cheap leather, flaking at the corners, but the stitching still holding up. He hooks it between two fingers and turns Richie’s pocket inside out as he whisks it back, and then he gets the wallet open to look for the plain white keycard.

Among ID and credit cards, Eddie finds not only a Blockbuster membership card, but also—

“That son of a bitch,” he says with disgust.

“What?” Bill asks.

“He really does have an old condom in here.” Eddie flings that in the general direction of the bathroom garbage can, the little square of foil hitting the wall and falling to the floor. Then he pulls out the keycard and pockets Richie’s wallet.

Mike begins little hitching gasps of slightly hysterical laughter. “That son of a bitch,” he agrees with Eddie.

Bill, who was not here for the condom-burning discussion, just gives them a dubious and perplexed look as he and Mike begin to shuffle Richie out of the bathroom.

Eddie holds the door open for them—Bev and Ben are rapidly repacking their few belongings and zipping up bags, and after a moment Ben throws a backpack over his shoulder and nods at them all and goes to help them get Richie down the stairs without breaking his neck—and then he sprints up the stairs to Richie’s room.

It takes him three times to get the keycard in the lock, his hands are shaking so bad.

“You dumb son of a bitch,” Eddie mutters, forcing the door open. He could be talking to himself. He could be talking to Richie. The point stands.

Richie’s room is casually trashed. The duvet and the sheets hang off the bed, and the suitcase is lying open but all the clothes are heaped atop the lid. Eddie rolls his eyes, aware that he’s sublimating his fear into being judgmental. He goes over to stuff the clothes into the bag. He throws open the closet (_please don’t let there be anything hiding in there_) but Richie never bothered to hang up any of his clothes in the closet, including the court outfits Bev picked out for him. Eddie leaves the door hanging open and pulls the drawers to the nightstands, scans under the bed for loose socks, and unplugs Richie’s phone charger from the wall and wraps the cable around the port. He throws that in the bag and then—aware he’s been putting this off—he turns toward the bathroom.

The door is open. It’s dark now, between the rain and the clouds and the sun setting. The shower curtain is pulled back, the towel is hanging on the rack, there’s still water drying on the floor in front of the bathtub (_Richie! Use a bathmat for chrissake!_) Eddie carefully creeps in and sees his own face in the mirror, glances around over his shoulder once, and then opens the medicine cabinet.

Toothbrush, toothpaste, and a yellow prescription bottle.

Curiosity grips him.

He picks up the toothpaste indifferently, the toothbrush gingerly—Richie doesn’t even have a travel cover, how has he been living like this?—and the bottle by the cap. Then he closes his whole hand around the label so he can’t read it, and carries it back to the suitcase.

_Don’t look at it,_ Eddie tells himself. _You hated Myra for invading your privacy, just take his stuff and go._

He jams all three items back in the suitcase, cringing as he does so, and zips it up around them. He’s sure Richie won’t mind.

Eddie’s gonna buy him a new toothbrush anyway.

By the time he gets down to the parking lot and his own car, hauling Richie’s suitcase with him, Ben is nowhere to be seen at the counter and Bill is crouched in front of the passenger seat. Eddie sees the back of Richie’s head, hair wilder than usual, as he goes around to throw Richie’s bag in the trunk. He looks expectantly at Bill, who stands up, clicks the button for the trunk to open, and hands Eddie his keys. Eddie trades him for Richie’s glasses.

As the trunk beeps open with its little warning sounds, Richie twists around in the seat. “Hey, Spaghetti,” he says, grinning. His frames are sitting a little askew, suggesting that Bill put them on his face for him.

“If you puke in my car, I’m going to push you out onto the side of the road,” Eddie says. He gets Richie’s suitcase wedged in there with his own bags, adjusts the toiletry bag to make sure he can still see out the rearview—ignoring the visibility issues caused by the rain, _ugh_—and clicks the trunk release again. The mechanized door begins descending, beeping steadily all the while.

Richie looks unconcerned.

Bill is still standing there, getting rained on. Eddie goes back around to the driver’s seat and lets himself in. “You want an umbrella?” he offers.

Bill shakes his head as Eddie closes his door. He reaches across Richie—who is holding a bucket on his lap and a bottle of what is definitely brand-name water in his left hand—to take Eddie’s hand. “I’ll see you at the airport,” he says.

“Drive safely,” Eddie says. He squeezes Bill’s hand and releases it. “Be very careful.”

“Practice safe car,” Richie says. “Use condiments.” Whatever that means. He looks like he’s barely sitting up, like Mike and Bill arranged him there like a doll, and his face is still pale and sweaty. “Love you, Bill.”

Half of Bill’s face crinkles into a wink when he smiles. “I love you too, Richie.” And he crouches and quickly kisses Richie’s sweaty cheek, then straightens up and steps back into the rain.

Like it’s that easy.

“My oh my,” Richie says. He moves slowly, carefully, pulling his feet away from the door and sitting more like a human being in a car so Bill can close the door. Eddie realizes after a moment that, if Richie’s capable of buckling himself in, it’s going to take him like four tries.

“Hold your bucket,” Eddie says. It’s mercifully empty. He leans across Richie, reaching for the seatbelt, and Bill sees what he’s doing and reaches to put the buckle in Eddie’s hand.

“Not a kid, Eddie,” Richie complains. Eddie can feel the heat coming off him in waves. Is it just because Eddie’s cold and wet, drenched from dragging the suitcase through the rain, or is it some other symptom? Eddie is careful not to touch him as he leans back and carefully buckles Richie in.

“I’ll see you at the airport,” Bill says again, and closes the door.

Eddie starts the car and watches for Bill to get into his own rental car, something sleek and black, and only then does he start to back up.

“Eddie,” Richie says.

“Shh,” Eddie replies.

“Eddie, you’re not buckled.” He looks nothing short of delighted at this. Despite the impromptu rain bath, he still smells sick, and they never washed out that bathtub.

Eddie reaches up with his left hand and quickly buckles his seatbelt, then focuses on getting them the hell out of there.

Richie falls asleep in the car.

In his defense, passing out is a surprisingly physical activity. And apparently being lightly possessed makes him sick. He can’t even tell if Stan is still hanging around somewhere, waiting to just rip Richie a new one. His mouth tastes like puke, he’s in Eddie’s car with a bucket on his lap, and everything up to and including his ears hurts.

Also there’s nothing to do, he’s afraid to talk in a way that he can’t remember being afraid to talk even when the threat of Bowers killing him was right there when he was a kid, and his choices of entertainment are ‘look at rain’ and ‘look at Eddie.’

_You know, Eddie. The guy you forgot about who's turning out to be the great love of your life, and also just saw you blow chunks until you passed out. The guy with the thing about puke._

Fucking _nope_.

So he stares at the window as the sky gets darker and darker, until the rain starts reflecting the light from the headlights and from inside the car instead of the sun, and everything takes on an eerie black-and-white quality. It’s like being in an old photo, if that old photo included a car with Bluetooth and a smartwater Bill bought at the airport and gave to Richie to rinse his mouth out. Richie did so. He doesn't feel any smarter.

He sweated a lot, coming back to consciousness, Bill and Mike slowly fading into his brain on either side of him. He opened his eyes right around the time that they were struggling to open Eddie’s car door, and he managed to mumble, “Handle’s broken” and shiver back into his body.

The deadlights didn’t feel like that. The deadlights were: one minute he was screaming at It, and the next minute he was on his back with Eddie on top of him, and in between Richie walked through hell for days.

He reaches up and idly presses a fingerprint into the condensation on the inside of the window.

“Dude,” Eddie says immediately.

Richie turns his head to look at him and incredulously mouths, _Dude_?

Eddie’s not even looking at him. He’s still hunched forward against the steering wheel, his face grave. How did he even know Richie was getting fingerprints on his windows?

Defiant, Richie angles his hand to the left and presses a second fingerprint that just overlaps on the first one, making a fat and blobby heart. Then he puts his hands down, tilts his head back against the headrest, and gives up.

He wakes when the car slows. Inertia carries him forward and he lurches, head up and eyes open. Eddie is grimacing and ducking his head slightly, and the bright white lights of Bangor International Airport are shining down on them, giving them directions based on what airline they’re looking for.

“We didn’t say where to meet up,” he says, saying nothing about Richie utterly failing in his role as shotgun.

Richie opens his mouth, closes it, and then experimentally clears his sore throat. It hurts. Doesn’t feel like there are any ghosts in there.

Quietly he says, “Short-term parking.”

“You think?”

Richie gestures around to the car that Eddie most definitely owns, so they’re not going to leave it with a rental agency.

Having Eddie drive him into the short-term parking garage brings on a sense of déjà vu so strong he gets dizzy, and then motion sick. When Eddie finally parks Richie opens his door enough to let the fresh air wash over him. It smells like concrete and motor oil. He doesn’t even bother unbuckling his seatbelt, just opens his mouth and breathes.

“You going to throw up again?” Eddie asks.

Eyes shut, Richie shakes his head.

Eddie is quiet for a moment. He turns off the car. Then he says, “Are you even well enough to go in?”

Richie drops his head and opens his eyes, feeling his mouth give an incredulous sneer.

“Rich, this is the scariest fucking thing you’ve ever done in your whole life.”

“Talking to dead Stan? Are you sure? Richie Tozier’s All-Dead Rock Show: The Reunion Concert?”

“No, I mean you’ve been quiet for forty full minutes.”

Richie takes a beat and blinks once. “Yeah, but I was asleep for like half of that.”

“You sleep with your mouth open.”

Suddenly defensive, Richie protests, “Only when I’m sitting up!”

“Yeah, but it’s your fucking deadlights face.”

_Oh._ Good to know they’re on similar wavelengths, then. Just great. Really fucking great.

“I was just asleep,” Richie says.

Eddie asks, “What did you see?”

“No.”

“Richie.”

“I’ll talk about anything you want in the world, Eddie, but not that.”

“You had us all in the circle going around—”

Richie gets his left hand down and pops the button on his seatbelt, then leans all the way into Eddie’s space, chin up and confrontational. “Tell me the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your life,” he says. “The thing so scary and so full of shame you haven’t told even us, huh, Eds? Everyone’s got one, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Eddie’s mouth tightens, reproachful. His eyes are big. He reaches out and puts his hand on Richie’s shoulder and slowly shoves him back.

“You smell like puke,” he says.

That’s what Richie thought.

They meet Bev and Ben near Richie’s rental car place. Bev is standing there with the keys in her hand and the paperwork she pulled out of Richie’s glove compartment—good for her, for showing the initiative—and appears to be explaining to the clerk that no, she will not give them back until her friend who actually rented the car gets here. Ben stands directly behind her, his head tilted at a slight angle and both his suitcase and Bev’s under his hands. His face is so calm and pleasant it’s threatening.

“That’d be me,” Richie says, sliding into place beside Bev. “I rented the car.” He fumbles for his ID and can’t find his wallet, and briefly panics.

Eddie wordlessly puts the wallet in his hand.

Richie stares at it, then turns to stare at Eddie. “Did you—”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Eddie says, which makes everyone but especially the clerk really uncomfortable.

The clerk tries to rally, though. He looks from Richie to Bev and says, “Sir, our rental policy doesn’t permit anyone other than the customer to drive the vehicle.”

“Well, my good man,” Richie says, voice coming out inexplicably pompous and plummy and eccentric. He runs with it. “I’m assuming man. Yes?”

The clerk, a college-age looking kid with the fashionable androgyny under his company hat that makes him look like a bellhop, nods.

“I’m afraid that my lady friend here simply had to drive the car. Because I’m extremely drunk,” Richie announces.

Beside him, Bev begins trembling with repressed laughter.

The clerk stares at him. “You’re drunk,” he repeats.

“Oh, I’m downright sauced,” Richie says. “And it’s extremely irresponsible to drive while inebriated. I would go so far to say that this would not be driving under the influence, this would be driving while intoxicated. I have reached toxic levels of alcohol consumption.”

The clerk looks skeptical. “Do you require medical services, sir?”

“No, that’s quite all right, I’ve puked a lot of it back up,” Richie replies. Surely the clerk can smell that that’s true. “But the young madam—”

“I’m older than you, Richie,” Bev says.

“The young madam,” he continues, “is actually demonstrating great responsibility by preventing my reckless endangerment of human lives. The societal obligation that we have to each other, to defend each other and defend others from each other. I heard a really great speech about it today, but I was sweating so much I didn’t remember that I remembered it. Brain’s funny that way. _Ha_.”

The clerk stares at him, stone-faced.

“So I had my chauffeur here drive me, so that I could return your vehicle to you, without endangering either myself or others,” he says. “And considering that I rented this car for three days, and I have no memory of renewing it, I’m guessing I’m about to give you a lot of money, whether or not I violated your policy.”

It turns out that the clerk’s computer has no record of Richie’s rental. Richie and Bev have the paperwork in hand, and the reservation number, and the contract he signed. They have the keys. They have proof that an actual human being handed Richie the keys to this car and allowed him to drive off in it. But the clerk can’t find anything on the date, or on Richie’s name, or even on the make and model of car.

“Uh-huh,” Richie says, so exhausted and thrown that he’s struggling to pivot.

Ben says, “So why don’t we just pay for the amount of money agreed to, give you the keys, and call it a day?”

Haystack comes in clutch once again! The clerk, who has clearly had enough of interacting with Richie, agrees and looks happy to see the back of them.

Ben is tapping at his phone. “Bill says to meet them next to the place with the live lobsters.”

Richie perks up. “Are we going to watch lobsters fight?”

There is, incredibly, a seafood restaurant with live lobsters on this side of the gate. Apparently, once you’ve gone through security you can even purchase a live lobster to take on the plane. Richie stares at the sign vacantly as Bill and Mike walk up to them, and then he turns to Bill and says, “Will you buy me a lobster? I just gave a bellhop all my money.”

“No,” Bill says calmly, and turns to survey their assembled ranks. “Is this it?”

Everyone slowly looks at Richie.

“Do you want me to talk to Stan, or do you want me to continue my streak of not barfing in an airport?” Richie asks. “Because it’s been, like six years since I straight up hurled in an airport, and I’d really like to get my token at the end of the year.”

Bill’s mouth opens slightly in disbelief and then he looks at Eddie.

Eddie holds up his hands. “I don’t know,” he says, sounding utterly defeated. “What do we do?”

“We go home,” Ben says.

“Well,” Mike says.

“Not you,” Richie says. “You can never go home again. It’s haunted.”

“I’d take the haunting if I could get it without the demons or the heads spinning around.”

“Did my head spin around?” Richie asks, half-serious. Surely Eddie would have mentioned that before he mentioned the sleeping-with-his-mouth-open thing.

“No,” Bill says. “It’s late. Not a lot of flights going out. And we have two cars. I’m thinking—” He looks to Mike. “Me and you buy tickets, and everyone else is driving home?”

“Where do you even live, Haystack?” Richie asks.

“Nebraska,” Ben says.

Richie sways in place and reaches out to brace himself on Eddie. He puts a hand up to his ribcage in a parody of life-altering relief. It's the sway he should have made today when the jury announced their verdict, but it meant too much to be sarcastic about then. Eddie looks at him in alarm.

“Oh thank god," Richie says. "I thought you were just into cowboy boots.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Bev says.

“Oh, so _you’re_ into cowboy boots—”

“Beep beep,” Bill repeats.

Richie stands upright and massages his chest. He’s so tired.

Eddie looks at him with something like concern, but when he catches Richie watching him look, he just makes eye contact and then turns back to Bill.

“This won’t be the last time,” Bev says. It’s the same tone she used to say _this kills monsters_ and _I’m supposed to be a part of it_. Quiet certainty.

Richie looks at her, dubious.

She meets his eyes. “I won’t let it be the last time. You’re all coming to see us again, at some point.” She looks at Mike. “Maybe we can meet you on your roadtrip?”

“I’ll never say no to that,” Mike replies.

He reaches out and hugs her first, and then Eddie throws himself in, and then they’re all piling on top of Beverly. Bunch of grown-ass adults hugging each other outside the lobster sign. Feeling uncomfortably tall, Richie ducks and presses his cheek to the top of Mike’s shoulder in slow jerky motions.

“Be proud,” he says, and has no idea where that comes from.

Bill looks up, sharp and knowing, and Richie covers his mouth with his hand just to be safe from puking down Mike’s back. But apparently his body’s all wrung out. He licks his lips and hears Stan say, “Be who you are.”

Then nothing.

Richie closes his eyes. Then they all step back at once, so no one has to be the first to let go.

Come to think of it, Richie has no idea how Bev and Ben are getting to Nebraska. He says as much to them as the four of them shuffle back to the short-term parking.

“I bought Mike’s truck,” Ben replies.

Eddie stares at Ben in disgust. “For scrap?”

“For the quintessential American roadtrip,” Ben says loftily.

Bev, who is standing with her chin lifted to look at the rain pounding on the glass walkway to the parking garage, lets her head loll to the side and grins lazily.

“Oh,_ quintessential_,” Richie repeats. “It’s _quintessential_. Eddie, can you teach Haystack here how to change a tire before our magic Stan-timer runs out?”

Bev frowns at him. “I know how to change a tire.”

Ben holds up both hands, like_ hey._ “I know how to change a tire.”

Richie realizes what he’s walked into.

Eddie stops walking, looks at Richie incredulously, and says, “Richard Tozier, do you not know how to change a tire?”

“Do you know… how many times I fucked your mom?” Richie asks, after running through his mental resume and concluding that yes, Eddie probably knows every one of the few skills Richie can claim. Also, hearing Eddie rattle out his full name is in no way like hearing Deaver rattle out his full name over and over again, trying to remind the jury that he's a person. Eddie says it like Richie's _in trouble_.

Eddie rolls his eyes and makes an audibly revolted noise, then keeps walking.

Mike’s truck is—not a beater, exactly, but it was clearly one of the few used vehicles available in Derry, Maine. They watch Ben throw their suitcases in the back.

“You’re sure that’s waterproof?” Eddie asks, anxious. “If it just absorbs the water, everything inside will be mildewed when it comes out. Bev, you have some nice clothes.”

Ben turns to look at him, mock-offended. “And I don’t?”

“It doesn’t matter if _you_ have nice clothes, Haystack, no one wants to see you with them on anyway,” Richie says.

It’s probably the most flagrantly thirsty thing he’s said to another man’s face, whether or not he actually meant it, and Bev buckles in half laughing. Eddie and Ben both turn bright red.

“Thank you?” Ben says, like he doesn’t know how else to reply.

“No, thank you,” Richie says, and whistles slightly. “Eduardo, I’m waiting on you.”

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie says, and goes forward to hug Bev. “I’ll call you,” he says.

When Bev hugs him, Richie says, “Keep sending pictures.”

Ben rolls his eyes.

“Maybe with yourself in some of them,” Eddie replies.

Richie tilts his head and says, “God, yeah, you two should do advertising together. I’d buy anything if the both of you just stood there and Vanna Whited at it.” The spread-armed _look at this_ gesture he does in Bev’s direction is a little less Vanna White and a little more Will Smith, but he holds it.

Ben considers this, and then Will Smiths at Richie in turn.

Bev laughs until she cries.

Walking back to Eddie’s half-wrecked car, Richie abruptly stops and jams his hands in his pockets. He can’t believe that not only is he still wearing a suit, that he completely forgot he was wearing a suit the whole time he was annoying the rental car guy.

“Wait, where are we going?” he asks Eddie.

Eddie stops—he’s not in his courthouse best, but Eddie always looks dressed up enough to get in anywhere. He takes care of his clothes—he picked across that stream in the Barrens with his pant legs rolled up to his knees to keep them from getting wet. He looks at Richie in a way that suggests Richie has brain damage.

Which, like, Richie did, for a while, so that’s a little uncalled for.

“California?” Eddie says gently. “I mean, I was gonna wait until we were a little closer before I put in your address, but it’s not that hard to get there, and if you can give me directions once we actually get into the city—”

“What?” Richie asks, stunned.

Eddie blinks at him and then also puts his hands in his pockets. “I mean, I can drop you off if you want and stay in a hotel, but I figured we were driving there together because you didn’t—” He gestures back the way they came, indicating the airport and Bill and Mike.

Honestly Richie hadn’t thought about it.

“I mean—you’re coming to California?” he asks. Then he shakes his head. “Not just California, I mean, you’re coming to L.A.? With me?”

“I just said I could stay in a hotel,” Eddie says.

“Why the fuck would I want you to stay in a hotel?” Richie asks, and then walks that back. “I mean, my place is a shithole, but like, that’s because I live there, not because the apartment’s bad or anything. I don’t have a guest room, but I have a couch.”

Eddie stares at him coldly. Richie does not understand and is thinking _oh shit_ right up until Eddie asks, “Have you had sex on that couch?”

“If you saw that couch, you wouldn’t ask that question,” Richie says.

“Because it’s visibly been fucked?”

“Because it’s the ugliest couch in the goddamn world, it’s a more effective form of birth control than, like—” Richie does not know what kind of birth control is _in_ right now. “—my couch is the most effective form of birth control in the world. It is anti-sex. It, like, disapprovingly asks if I’m really going out like that, the whole nine yards.”

Now more baffled than anything else Eddie stares at him. “What are you _talking about_, man?”

Richie twists in place and makes the angry muscle in his back stretch. “I mean I haven’t had sex on that couch, jeez, don’t get your panties in a twist, are you coming or not?”

“Great way to start the roadtrip, Richie,” Eddie says, and unlocks his car so that it beeps at them.

Richie follows along after him. “So—you’re coming? You’re not going back to New York?”

“I’m not going back to New York,” Eddie says.

“Good, good, New York’s full of fuckin’ vampires anyway, come to L.A.—well, we have vampires too, but they’re like, benign goths larping and shit,” Richie says. “And, I mean, but is it _the quintessential_ American roadtrip?”

“Maine to California? Yeah, I think we got them beat.”

Eddie opens his door, slides in, and then leans across to open the busted door for Richie. Richie stoops and climbs in. The bucket—hopefully superfluous now—and the smartwater are sitting in the footwell, and he awkwardly maneuvers around them. Then he picks up the water and takes a sip. Eddie buckles himself in—Richie rolls his eyes and buckles up before the expectant stare can be turned in his direction—and guides them out of a parking garage for a second time today.

Richie is almost paralyzed by this inane flutter happening in his chest cavity. He kind of hopes it’s Stan, ready to come in and totally wreck Richie’s shit and put him out of his misery.

In the long silence, Richie asks, “So… anyone know any jokes?”

Eddie, who is staring ahead at the road with his Serious Driving Face on, does his best to suppress his smile. Then he gives up and smirks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friggin' finally, gentlemen! Get out of the Townhouse! Go to Los Angeles! Be gay, do crimes! Get out of my head!
> 
> (I mean, we're not there yet, I'm foreseeing road trip drama and then however the hell I'm going to get them into talking about their feelings, but we're finally getting back on track!
> 
> Then again, knowing how Eddie can with maximum accuracy find his way in the dark, I don't know where the hell we're going.)
> 
> I opened the word doc for this whole project on 17 September, it's 24 September right now, and we've just hit 100 pages. I had no idea this was going to happen. Thank you for all your lovely comments.


	5. In the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie Kaspbrak's Taxi Service makes a trip. Richie's self-control takes a bit of a walkabout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that it's 48 hours' drive from Bangor to L.A.? Because I sure didn't. So I lied about the total length again. But there's an end in sight now! I don't know if it's going to be Chapter 7, but I think I'm starting to get a handle on how this fic is gonna go! (Watch Eddie just yank the wheel to the right and friggin' wreck my shit, like, 'bitch, you thought.')
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: night driving? The leper? Mention of abuse of benzodiazepines? Continued internalized homophobia? I don't know, man, this all seems really mild compared to the last chapter.
> 
> Thank you to the person on tumblr who identified Eddie's car for the good of the fandom, it's a Cadillac Escalade, whatever the hell that means. Also for the purposes of this fic, I forgot that Richie's car was a two-seater, so I guess we're in a canon-divergence where he can make jokes about Eddie in the car's nonexistent backseat.
> 
> I'm gonna have to update the summary for this freaking story, aren't I?

They get out of Derry.

Unfortunately, Derry doesn’t want to let them go.

Unlike basically everything else in Eddie’s life, driving is one of the objectively dangerous activities he regularly engages in that doesn’t terrify him half to death. He likes cars—he doesn’t think he’s ever actually gotten hard over a car (thanks so fucking much, Richie), but he trusts them. The laws of machines are predictable, and Eddie has learned most of the ones he needs for cars.

Granted, he doesn’t know what he’d do if he were Ben, driving Mike’s truck, and the truck suddenly caught fire, as seems likely. He voices this concern and Richie says, “Pull over on the side of the road, play the harmonica, and watch it burn,” but Eddie definitely wouldn’t do that, and he doubts Richie has a harmonica, and if it turns out that Richie _does_ have a harmonica on his person Eddie’s going to take it and throw it out the window before they get to Palmyra, littering laws be damned.

But cars make sense and have since day one. Eddie understands how long it took humanity to get to a germ theory of disease and how people thought that the plague was probably caused by bad smells instead of all their goddamn flea bites and how at one point drilling a hole in your skull felt like the best thing to do. He doesn’t _approve_ of these things, but when you can’t find the cause you have to backtrack and make a lot of guesses.

Cars make sense. There’s no backtracking, no guessing. Eddie has a vague memory of a book in a children’s library at one point, laying out the roles of gasoline and cylinders and coolant, and just feeling a wonderful sense of relief. This causes this causes this, and suddenly you’re moving.

He doesn’t know if that was before It or after, but he has the memory back now, so he’s not going to question it.

Point being, Eddie is safe in the car. Richie is also in the car, and so Richie is safe—safe as Richie ever is, when he’s an entirely different kind of danger in the passenger seat, and keeps looking anxiously at the radio. Eddie knows how to compensate for the water on the road, knows what to do if he hydroplanes, knows not to drive through standing water. The highway doesn’t collect puddles and the rain runs right off into the meridian, which is rapidly filling up and becoming a bog like the Barrens. Eddie drives.

Half an hour towards Palmyra. Then slowly southwest, towards Waterville, Augusta, Brunswick, Portland, Saco. Eddie just came this way, driving eight hours to be late for Richie’s exoneration, and he would have been there earlier but the stress from Myra wore him down to the point he had to stop at a rest area, park, lock all his doors, and fall asleep sitting up in the driver’s seat. He could feel himself getting so slow and tired he was going to get himself killed, and what a waste that would be.

Eddie slowly becomes aware that he’s starving, and that Richie hasn’t even made any noise about “are we there yet” or needing to find a bathroom or any of the nervous drumming he did that night after the bridge. Eddie tries to stay focused on the road, but he’s not convinced Richie’s doing as well as he thinks he is, so he glances over every so often.

Sometimes Richie stares straight ahead. Sometimes Richie’s looking back at him, eyes and hair black in the dark and making his face pale as a ghost. Eventually Eddie glances over and sees that Richie’s head is tilted back, curls on his forehead, his mouth slightly open, his eyelashes just about touching the dirty lenses of his glasses, asleep again.

It should only take them three hours to get out of Maine. That’s adjusting for the rain and the slower speeds of everyone around them also trying to drive carefully in it. But it feels like it’s taking forever—every time Eddie glances at a mile marker he’s surprised and disappointed that he hasn’t gotten further, and every time he looks at the clock he thinks _Jesus, really?_

He’s willing to chalk it up to the time dilation of not wanting to spend any more time in Maine than he has to. Then he hits stretches where they’re the only car on the road, Eddie’s low beams are the only things cutting through the blackness where the trees stand honor guard on the highway, and he still feels he’s losing time.

And then he starts to lose visibility.

The lines are still reflective under the lights, and the rain is coming down in sheets but doesn’t seem to collect on the road. There are no sickening moments where he hears the tires suddenly sink into a puddle far deeper than he expected; there are no _potholes_, even, and this is _Maine_. But his headlights seem to light less and less of the way for him, moment by moment, and eventually Eddie takes to counting his following distance and realizes the lights are only clearing the way about two seconds in front of him. It’s not safe. He tries to slow down, to give himself a little more time to react, but the headlights seem to weaken even further. He puts on his hazards. They’re just crawling along.

Eventually he slows to a point where Richie wakes up. Eddie tries to ignore him, looking for cues to the road around them and paying rigid attention to the reflective white and yellow lines that bracket them in on either side, but fear has his senses sharp. He hears Richie’s breathing deepen and become manual instead of automatic, and then Richie’s hair slide against the headrest as he sits up.

“Uh, Eddie,” he says, his voice low and thick with sleep.

“Not now,” Eddie says. He’s choked up so far on the steering wheel that his neck and shoulders are aching.

Richie takes that. Eddie hears the flex of screws and plastic as Richie takes off his glasses, and then the sound of him breathing on his lenses, and the rustle of fabric as he wipes them clean on his shirt. Then Richie says, “Eddie, where the fuck is the road, man?”

“We’re on the road,” Eddie says. He’s afraid to look over any further, because his eyes have adjusted enough that he can keep track of the white and yellow paint, and he’s afraid that if he looks away he won’t be able to find them again.

“It’s—” A pause. “It’s not even ten at night, what is this, fuckin’ Helsinki? We ought to have, like, light pollution here. Where did the fucking trees go?”

“Rich,” Eddie says. He keeps his voice gentle, trying to hold Richie’s attention. If Eddie says it the way he normally says anything, Richie will talk back, and Eddie can’t have that right now. “If you distract me, I’m gonna wreck the car. And then we’re gonna die.”

There’s a pause as Richie absorbs this. “Can you see?” he asks.

Eddie feels himself blink, longer than he should. He should keep his eyes wide open, trying to take in as much light as possible. “Barely.”

Richie is quiet. Then Eddie hears him fumbling in his pocket.

“Don’t take out your phone,” Eddie says. “The light.”

Richie considers this, then reaches over and lays his hand on top of the dashboard display to hide even the light from that black background.

“Thank you,” Eddie says.

The rain appears to froth on the hood of the car, all white and silver.

Eddie keeps looking for mile markers—there should be mile markers. He can’t find them. On his right, Richie’s breathing is starting to take on a panicked quality. Eddie can’t even see stars, but he has the ghost of the boundaries of the road, telling him where to go—

And then he glances at Richie and, to his horror, realizes that the afterimage of the white and yellow lines remain impressed on his eyes. He doesn’t have the road at all, he has the memory of the road. He's been driving into nothing and he doesn't know for how long. The only comfort he has is that nothing has rolled across the hood of his car yet.

Eddie’s had his hazards on for a while, but now he thinks of whiteout blizzards. He should pull off the road—he should listen to hear the tires on asphalt or on grass, and he should turn off his lights and hope that no other travelers lost in the dark see their car and think they’re going the right way. He thinks of pileups, the way that cars stack and how one can hit five cars down and still move someone at the front of the row, like dominos, like falling buildings.

Richie whispers, “We’re not being allowed to see.”

“We’re safe in the car,” Eddie says. While that may be true, that doesn’t mean the car itself is safe. The car can be cracked open like a steel and plastic and fiberglass egg, and Eddie and Richie will go spilling out. All he can hear is rain.

“No, it’s what Mike said—we’re not being _allowed_ to see, he had that dream with the phone—”

Richie falls silent, but the urgency from his words hangs in the air, and then there’s a scrabbling sound as he moves and his face appears, very white and very close, in Eddie’s peripheral vision. Black eyes in a white face, further segmented by the black glasses frames, only about as visible as Eddie’s hand in front of his face. There's no reflection on his lenses. Even in pitch black, Eddie should be able to see his own hand in front of his face, and instead he’s got Richie pulling an _I’m not touching you_ in order to get his attention.

_“Richie,”_ Eddie admonishes him. He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t stop the car, but he can’t keep going. He’s coasting now, and hoping to god and the Turtle and Stanley Uris that he doesn’t hydroplane.

“You were wearing glasses,” Richie says. “In my dream. You were wearing glasses.”

Then something touches his face and Eddie flinches, the back of his head hitting his headrest and his hands tightening down so hard on the steering wheel that his knuckles ache. His ankle doesn't flex on the pedal only through _sheer will to live._

“Richie, Jesus _fuck—”_ Eddie says, because the sensation is a scrape over his ears, and then Richie’s glasses slot into place on his nose. He blinks once, twice, and then stares at the road ahead of him.

It’s heavy rain, but the blackness is _bright_ now. Eddie can see the differences between the sky and the road and the trees, and the paint on the roads is luminous, he can at last see the lane dividers again.

“Did it work?” Richie says. “You’re making a really stupid face right now, I think it worked?”

“It worked.” Eddie reaches up and puts a hand on Richie’s forehead and pushes him back into his seat. “Let me drive. Can you see?”

“No, it’s all black,” Richie says. “Not like I could see anyway without them. Full dark, no stars.” He pauses for a long moment and then says, “Stan?”

“Do not start fucking puking,” Eddie orders.

“I’m not trying to hold a séance in the passenger seat of your car, I just—does ‘full dark, no stars’ sound like me?” Richie asks, irritable.

They wait, but if Stan has anything to say, they don’t hear it. Eddie does spy something far more reassuring, though. There’s a roadsign up ahead. _Portsmouth NH_ _29 miles_.

Eddie lets out a sigh of relief so strong it pulls tears from his eyes, and he drives.

When they make it over the state line into New Hampshire, Richie puts his arms up over his head so fast that his fists collide with the roof of the car. “Woo-hoo!” he says, apparently undaunted.

“You can see?”

“I can see _light_,” Richie says. “You’re just a little person-shaped blob in the driver’s seat, but I can see colors again.”

“Oh, jesus,” Eddie says. He takes Richie’s glasses off his face and is immediately relieved that he can still read the roadsigns. “What are those, fake glasses? Are you one of those hipster kids who wears the plastic glasses because they look cool, now?”

“Man, I wish. You think that’d be part of my _look_ if it didn’t have to be?”

An ache starts under Eddie’s tongue and a wash of saliva floods his mouth. He swallows. “You have a _look_?” he asks.

“I didn’t say it was a _good look_,” Richie replies.

They stop at a rest area, because now that they’re out of the hellscape Eddie’s blood sugar is so low he’s shaking and Richie is looking sick once more. When they park Eddie has a moment of fear that if he leaves his car he’ll never find it again, and he and Richie will be trapped in a rest area in northern New Hampshire. But he locks the car so that it beeps, and puts the keys in his pocket, and turns to Richie.

Richie is standing with his hand on the roof of the car, head tilted all the way back so the rain runs down into his hair. He left his suit jacket inside, and his purple shirt is dark and plastered to him now. The effect is somewhere between _drowned rat_ and _Flashdance_.

Eddie jerks his gaze back to Richie’s face, glad of the cold rain for once. “Please, please wash yourself off in this rest area bathroom.”

Richie’s head snaps back down and he peers at Eddie over the roof of the car, his eyes completely invisible with all the rain dripping off his glasses. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“_Flashdance_,” Eddie replies immediately.

Richie’s mouth breaks into a grin, all teeth. “You fuckin’ wish, Kaspbrak.”

But when they get inside he goes into the men’s room as requested. Eddie walks down to the convenience store, which is the only part of the rest area still open. There’s a teenager there, a girl Bev’s size who definitely shouldn’t be the only one here at night. She puts on her customer service face as soon as she spots Eddie.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

He gestures around at the displays stupidly. “Travel toothbrush?”

By the time Richie comes out of the restroom—looking like he just squeezed his hair out in the sink, and possibly his shirt judging from all the new wrinkles in it—Eddie has an array of things laid out on one of the tiny tables in the eating area. Among them are a travel toothbrush, travel toothpaste, a Wick (small-size plastic toothbrush with a bead more like a liquid-gel mint than anything else in the center of the bristles), a tiny bottle of mouthwash, three packs of baby wipes, and a whole array of crackers, chips, and snacks. Eddie is halfway through demolishing an ice cream bar.

Richie looks at the spread and says, “I have a toothbrush, you know.”

“You’re washing your mouth out before you get back in my car.”

Richie’s eyes flare in surprise and then roll. “You’ve got great bedside manner, Dr. Kaspbrak.” He yanks out his chair and sits down.

Eddie looks Richie in the eye and then bites down on the ice cream bar. Chocolate shell splits apart under his teeth.

“Holy shit,” Richie laughs, and then looks away, contemplative. “Guess I left my toothbrush in the—” He freezes.

“I got it,” Eddie says.

Richie blinks once. “You got it,” he repeats.

“Yeah. It’s in your bag. But if you think I’m standing there in the rain watching you rummage through there trying to find your filthy toothbrush—why the fuck don’t you have a travel cover?”

“You got it,” Richie says, as if he hasn’t heard him. “Did you also get—” He cuts himself off.

Eddie tries to play it cool. “Your meds? Yeah.”

Richie looks far more apprehensive now that Eddie’s trying to be serious instead of implying he’s gonna bite his dick. “Okay. Thanks.” He clears his throat and reaches out to open up a packet of Doritos. “So did you, say, happen to look them up online, or did you just know based on your honorary pharmaceutical degree?”

“I didn’t look,” Eddie replies, thankful for it now.

Richie looks at him like he doesn’t believe him.

Eddie bites down on the wooden stick of the ice cream bar and scrapes the last bit of ice cream off it. He lays it carefully atop the wrapper and says, “So when I went home to New York, Myra met me in my kitchen with printouts of all of our text messages. Like, the club’s text messages. She ordered them from the phone company.”

Richie, whose expression had gone flat and wary at the mention of Myra, raises his eyebrows. “Shit, Eds.”

“Yeah, I think she thinks we’re six m—five men,” he corrects himself, “all in love with Bev, who’s some kind of sex worker sending us… blue pictures.”

Eddie doesn’t know how to describe what Richie’s mouth does then, but his whole face is wide-eyed and wobbly and ironic. “‘Blue’?” is what he picks to quibble over.

Eddie rolls his eyes.

“No, _blue_ pictures, seriously? Are you gonna take Bev down to the soda jerker—” Apparently unable to help himself, Richie makes an obscene gesture that could either be interpreted as _jerking off_ or _milking a cow_. “—and split a malted, and then take your bobby socks to the high school gymnasium—”

“So you can tell me about the pills in your own damn time, or not at all,” Eddie interrupts.

Richie looks like he doesn’t know what to do, with his bit about the fifties just collapsing in halves around him. He stares at Eddie. Eddie stares back. Richie did a good enough job hiding them while Eddie was there, while they were all sharing a room and then when it was just Eddie and him, so clearly it means enough to hide it.

“What if I’m hooked on amphetamines?” Richie asks.

Eddie raises an eyebrow and says coolly, “And that would affect your behavior exactly how?”

“Yowza, Eds, getcher chucks right here.” Richie reaches into the bag and starts eating the fluorescent-bright corn chips.

They eat garbage food in silence for a few minutes.

Then Richie says, “BuSpar.”

“Come again?” He thinks he misheard.

“BuSpar. Well. Not now, it hasn’t been BuSpar for like, a decade, it’s generic now, but as soon as I went on the generic I started puking at like the drop of a hat, so thanks, big pharma.”

Eddie stares at Richie for a moment, mentally running through what he knows about pills. Then he says, “That goes through your liver.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been drinking—you’ve been drinking, like, a _concerning_ amount, _and_ you’re taking hardcore stuff that taxes your liver?”

Richie drops his voice low and hisses, “_No_, for some reason my _anti-anxiety medication_ wasn’t helping me with my _completely rational fear of a killer clown_, so I stopped taking it and instead I got _fucking hammered_.”

This statement is upsetting enough that Eddie puts both hands over his cheeks, one cautiously over the barely-healed hole in his face. “You _stopped taking your medication_? Are you in _withdrawal_? That’s like—that’s like a long-term thing!”

Richie sits up, his expression all _fucking really?_ “Is it? Really. I didn’t notice, after fourteen years."

Eddie puts his hand on his chest and leans forward, staring down at the table to see if that’ll work or if he’ll have to put his head between his knees.

It's clearly not the reaction Richie was expecting. “Are you okay?”

“How are you alive? How do you make the choices you make and _stay alive_? You were—” He looks up and around, but the cashier from the little convenience mart is nowhere to be seen. He lowers his voice anyway. “You were _on trial_ and you were _off your anxiety medication_?”

“Yeah, but the anxiety was functionally indistinguishable from my constant hangover,” Richie says. “Or, turns out, from being possessed by the ghost of a Jewish accountant from Georgia.” He toasts Stan with a Dorito.

“Are you back on them now?”

Richie stares at him incredulously. “I’m not on anything right now,” he reminds Eddie, voice slow and _you're an idiot_. “You just watched me throw up everything I’ve eaten in my entire life, like, five hours ago.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose in revulsion. “But are you going back to taking them?”

“I don’t know, are you going to continue to drive me to drink? Because if you are, then absolutely not.”

Eddie has no idea what to make of that. “What—wh—what?”

Richie sets his jaw and points at Eddie. “Do _not_ make me sing ‘Thrift Shop’ in this rest area.” He leans all the way back in his chair and averts his eyes, somehow managing to eat Doritos and sulk at the same time.

“What do you _mean_, ‘continue to drive you to drink’? I’m not driving you to drink, you’re _forty_, you’re responsible for your own binge drinking, Richie!”

“Oh really,” Richie says.

“Yes, fucking really, that’s how that fucking works!”

Richie raises his eyebrows, holds up an index finger, and says, “Two-part pop quiz, ready, go: how many drinks did you have at the Chinese restaurant before you said ‘let’s take off our shirts and kiss’?”

Eddie’s jaw snaps shut. He feels his shoulders shoot up to his ears and his face flush. Also from the way his scalp his prickling his hair’s probably standing on end, like an actual goddamn cartoon.

Richie’s expression is still pure _go fuck yourself_. He holds up a second finger. “And second question, how many drinks did I have _after_ that?”

Eddie covers his mouth with both hands like a child and stares down at the pile of junk food. “I was really drunk,” he says, muffled.

“I know.”

“It was irresponsible of us to drive back to the hotel after that.”

“Yeah, super irresponsible.”

“I didn’t know—”

Richie grins, eyes cold. “Know what?” His eyebrows climb that little bit higher. “That I’d say yes?”

_Fuck._ Eddie stares at him, wide-eyed, brain skipping on _did he just—?_ and not getting any further than that.

Richie breaks the eye contact and smiles thinly down at the table. “Well you know now, so you can keep your elbows tucked in as you wander around with my precious sensibilities and _feelings_.” He says this last in the way Eddie would say _nuclear warheads_. Eddie has no idea where all this spite came from, but it's in the air now.

It fades after a moment, Richie tipping his head to the side and saying, “So, BuSpar—’cause it was Xanax, but I liked that a whole _fucking_ lot, so of course they took it away.” He looks up with a Ben Hanscom expression on his face, incredibly polite but also meaning _fucking come at me_; eyebrows raised as if in interest, lips pressed into a line so tight they’ve gone white at the edges. Eddie thinks of the cashier he just talked to.

To say nothing of getting back in the car with Richie without him brushing his teeth, Eddie cannot imagine getting back in the car with Richie like this. Is he mad about the drugs? The drinking? The—the—the—

_The way I’m leading him on?_

And it’s not that—Eddie’s not—he doesn’t _not_ mean it, it’s not the way Richie has been flirting continuously with Mike and Ben and Bev, or the broad-voiced “my oh my” after Bill put him in the car and kissed him on the cheek, it’s not a _joke_, it’s just—

_Tell me the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your life. The thing so scary and so full of shame you haven’t told even us, huh, Eds? Everyone’s got one, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine._

“The leper,” Eddie blurts.

Richie looks up again, brow furrowed, creases in his forehead. Concerned and perplexed now at the non sequitur.

Eddie swallows. “He said—he said—”

How to explain that space, when It crawled out from under Neibolt, the place his mom said never to go to because those tramps were dirty and diseased and they left needles under the porch? How to explain how it felt to see that clean and bright pink little pill in that rotting hand, reaching out to him? The contamination happened so fast, a safe thing enfolded in filth and decay.

Eddie opens his mouth and drags in a deep breath. It feels good, feels better, opens up his chest and then, as he sighs it out, gets rid of that. He tries to say it like Richie just casually tossed out the bit about the benzos.

“He wanted to blow me.”

As soon as the words are out his whole face goes hot and burns.

Richie blinks once and then twice, his expression unchanging. “And not in like a ‘go blow your dad, you mullet-wearing asshole’ kinda way, right?”

Eddie blinks too, and feels the whole world shutter and then reappear around him. “No,” he says. “Like in a—asked me for money. Then he said—” His throat closes and he clears it, looking away toward the Starbucks with the metal gate pulled down over it. “—for free, he said he’d do it for free.”

Eddie has a clear moment to think _I swear to god if he makes a joke about this I’m just gonna start screaming_ before Richie comes out of his statue pose and reaches for another Dorito.

“Okay,” Richie says.

Not an _okay, weirdo_. Nothing but acceptance in his tone.

“Okay?” Eddie repeats, half just making sure he heard right.

“Okay,” Richie says again.

“Okay,” Eddie says, and his hands creep up the side of his head to pull at his hair. “Okay. I’m just gonna—” He gets up out of his chair.

Richie reacts to that with the same lurching alarm they all had when he started heaving in the Townhouse. He stays in his seat, but only just. “Okay there, Kaspbrak?”

“Fine,” Eddie says airlessly. “Just gonna use the bathroom, I got stuck in the Biblical plague of darkness in Maine, and I…” He doesn’t even bother finishing the sentence, just walks into the men’s room.

It is surprisingly clean, for a rest area bathroom. Must have been scrubbed down at closing time, with all the restaurants. Blue cleaner sits in the toilet bowls. Eddie does the necessary and washes his hands, constantly staring into the mirror at his sweating face. Bowers isn’t going to suddenly kick one of the stall doors open—all the doors are open anyway, Eddie can see the whole room—and appear over his shoulder, ready for a second attempt.

_Richie stopped him_, Eddie tells himself, bracing his wet hands on the sink. _Richie always went after anything that hurt you, and you’re scared of him, you just told him to his face that you’re scared of him because you’re scared of his body and you’re scared of your body and how do you even live, Kaspbrak? How do you live? Why?_

He sinks down into a crouch on the floor, arms still outstretched as he hangs off the sink, and he breathes in the chemical scents of cleaners and urinal cake and everything done trying to make something filthy by nature clean.

Richie’s a dick.

This is not news to you, so we'll move on.

Eddie comes back with the visible ghosts-in-the-eyes look of someone who had a panic attack in a public restroom. Richie, who had been thinking about replying with _Paul Bunyan offered me a kiss_ right before Eddie up and bolted, tries to pretend he doesn’t notice. He opens a second bag of Doritos.

“You were like, _just_ sick, eat some goddamn saltines before you get back in my car, you’re supposed to have something bland, that’s why I got them.” Eddie sits down but spiritually remains hovering.

_And he’s back, ladies and gentlemen._ Richie stuffs four Nacho Cheese Doritos in his mouth at once and, through the blockade of chips, manages, “I’m here for a good time, not for a long time.”

“You’re disgusting is what you are.” Eddie picks up the only piece of fruit on the table—a mangled-looking banana—and shoves it toward Richie.

Richie looks down at the banana, which is more brown than yellow, and then back up at Eddie. “I’m not eating that.”

If Eddie thinks he can get through eating a banana without making a blowjob joke, he’s forgotten Richie more than either of them realized; and Richie’s pretty sure after that little declaration about his literal worst fear that Eddie would be within his rights to just leave Richie here, at this closed-down rest area in New Hampshire.

“Do you even know what’s in Doritos?—”

“I’m good on my potassium levels, thanks.”

“—there’s actual titanium in them, Richie, you’re eating titanium, you want to put something they make missiles out of in your body? You think that’s not gonna fuck you up?”

“Well _you’re_ made out of _carbon_, so by suggesting I eat_ literally anything_ you’re pushing me to _cannibalism_—and why’d you fucking buy it if you didn’t want me to eat it?”

Eddie frowns, looking surprised and confused.

Richie leans forward a little. “Did you buy it on accident?” Is that a thing people do? Did Eddie just swipe his hand like a bear (_as if_) and pick up everything related to oral (_ha_) hygiene and then all the little baggies of snack food?

Eddie shakes his head. “It’s, like, all the shit I was never allowed to eat when I was a kid.”

Or with his wife, back in New York, who didn’t let him have fried things.

Richie leans back, spreading his hands over the loot. “Well, Edward Kaspbrak, it’s your lucky day, because you’re a fucking adult and you can buy as much junk as you want! You can even eat it. You don’t have to donate it all to your local ghost-whispering comedian!”

Eddie eyes all his purchases, his eyebrows raised and his expression considering and wary at the same time. His gaze flicks back up to Richie, and then back down to the “food.” Slowly he reaches out and takes a packet of M&Ms.

“There you go,” Richie says.

Then Eddie proceeds to rip open the packet of M&Ms, tilt his head back, and let them all fall into his mouth like he’s taking a shot. Richie stares at the exposed column of his throat, the sharp angle of his Adam’s apple.

_Shit._ What the _fuck_ has Richie gotten himself into?

Eddie looks back down, chipmunk-cheeked with chocolate. He looks proud of himself.

“There you go,” Richie repeats, trying to put his brain back in its cage. “You eat those M&Ms. You eat them like a man.”

He looks like a kid getting away with something again, wide smile distorted by his effort to chew with his mouth shut. Richie watches for several long moments of crunching and, once Eddie’s swallowed, holds out the bag of Doritos.

“Go on,” he says, in the same way he’d say _Come on, man._

Eddie takes a Dorito.

Once they’re both too full of junk and sugar to be worried about the _abyssal__ hellscape _they just drove through anymore, Richie remembers that there are other people in the world besides Eddie Kaspbrak.

“Fuck,” he says.

Eddie is gathering wrappers and the untouched banana. His head snaps up. “What?”

“Ben and Bev,” Richie says.

He has the privilege of watching Eddie process that and then the dawning horror on his face. It would be funny if this weren’t so damn scary. Richie already has his phone out and is pushing the button—this damn phone has real 3D buttons—to call Bev.

She picks up shortly. “You okay?” she asks immediately.

“I’m okay, are you okay?”

“We’re okay,” she replies. “Blood just poured out of the tape deck, though.”

Richie makes a face. “Jesus.”

“Yeah. We’re about to pass into New York, though, and it stopped as soon as we were out of Maine, so now it’s just—” There’s a pause. “The smell.”

“You’re in—you’re in New York?” Richie repeats. He looks up at Eddie, who is frowning. “We’re only in New Hampshire! How did you beat us so bad?”

“We’re not there yet, but we’re about to pass in,” Bev says. “You’re only in New Hampshire? How?”

“I mean, Penn—uh, _something_ happened,” Richie says. “Eddie couldn’t see to drive. But it’s okay. Nothing a little spit couldn’t cure.”

There’s a muffled giggle. “Did you _spit_ on Eddie? Did he leave you in New Hampshire? Is that why you’re still there?”

Eddie is giving him a deathglare from the vicinity of the garbage cans.

“No, I mean, I cleaned off my glasses, he wore them, it was fine.”

“They’re in New York?” Eddie mouths.

Richie widens his eyes and nods at him.

“They can’t be in New York. New York is five hours away. It’s only—” He looks down at his watch. “It’s only been four hours since we left Bangor, that truck can’t pull any kind of speed.”

Richie pulls his phone away but it’s so old school he can’t see the time and the phone call on the same screen. “What time did we leave Bangor?”

“Like, eight?” Bev replies in his ear.

“It’s only midnight,” Eddie says.

Richie turns around and stares up at the big clock on the food court, then shakes his head. “Uh-uh, Eddie Spaghetti,” he says.

The clock says that it’s one in the morning.

Eddie looks at his watch again, and then follows Richie’s gaze up to the clock.

“Right, so we just lost an hour off our lives,” Richie says into the phone. “It’s not daylight savings time or anything, is it?”

“No, that’s not until November,” Bev says.

“I don’t know what day it is,” Richie says. “Looks like we got stuck in a time bubble trying to leave the state of Maine.” He looks at one of the chairs and seriously considers kicking it over.

“Are you okay?” Bev asks.

“This is not my first time bubble,” Richie says. He didn’t dream while he was sitting up in the passenger seat of Eddie’s car, but he’s getting the skin-crawling deadlights feeling all over again.

He hears Bev draw in a deep breath on the other end of the phone. “Richie, what did you see?”

“Anyway we’re fine love you Bev bye,” Richie says, and hangs up. Then he puts his hands in his hair and spins in a circle slowly.

“Let’s get back in the car,” Eddie says.

“Teeth,” Richie replies.

“I mean yeah, go brush your disgusting teeth and then we’ll get back in the car,” Eddie says. “Don’t forget the mouthwash. Stomach acid’ll just erode away your enamel, and you don’t get enamel back, Richie.”

“You just don’t want to be stuck in an enclosed space with my vomit breath,” Richie says, though now he has Dorito breath.

“That too,” Eddie replies. Then he frowns the way he does when he’s trying to fight his way back to an old memory. “Wasn’t your dad a dentist?”

“Maybe,” Richie says, pouting his lower lip a bit. He picks up the eighteen dental care products Eddie spent money on and goes back to the men’s room. When he comes back out, minty fresh and sparkling, he bares his teeth for Eddie’s approval and then holds his hand out. “Let me drive.”

Eddie looks like Richie just asked for one of his kidneys.

“You’re tired, and you drove through the time warp,” Richie says.

“You passed out today.”

“Yeah, and I’ve taken a couple naps since then,” Richie replies. “Come on, your car’s already banged up, I can’t do any worse to it.”

“You can absolutely do worse to it. You can do _so_ much worse to it, Richie, cars are built to crumple nowadays so that the pieces of metal don’t fly directly into you when you wreck, and do you think that door has any crumple left in it? If that door takes a second impact it’s gonna fucking kill me. Do you think I’m leaving that in your hands?”

“Believe it or not, I am capable of driving a motor vehicle,” Richie says dryly. “Nobody’s ever even T-boned me before—well…” He frowns, because being T-boned sounds faintly dirty and he can’t even imagine what that would be. “Do me a favor, look that up on Urban Dictionary.”

“I will not do that,” Eddie says.

They leave the rest area and stand outside among the folded-up picnic umbrellas. Richie turns to Eddie, stunned.

It has stopped raining.

Eddie does give him the keys, eventually, and Eddie nods off in the car as Richie expected. Richie does not have the unfailing internal GPS that Eddie fuckin' Kaspbrak does, he’s just a mortal like anyone else, so he looks leerily at the dashboard clock and then accepts the terms of service and pulls up the car’s GPS. There’s no electronic screaming, no blood starts pouring out of the CD player, and Eddie doesn’t wake up.

Richie, who has never been accused of knowing when to stop, quietly murmurs under his breath, “Any moment without the waterworks now, Stan, paging Stan, come in, Stan.”

In his sleep Eddie turns his head toward the window. Richie freezes, but Eddie does nothing else. Neither does Stan.

The GPS urges him to proceed to the highlighted route.

If Ben and Bev are only an hour ahead of them and already in New York—admittedly the whole rest-area fucking-around thing lost them precious time, but he and Eddie were both about ready to dissolve before the saw the signs for it so they had to stop—then Richie’s pretty sure he’ll be able to get them into New York before Eddie wakes up.

But Richie has a strong sensation—and it’s probably an irrational one, he knows, _but what if it’s not_—that if they get out of the car in New York, he’s not going to see Eddie again. Not because Eddie will suddenly realize he was a moron to give up anything for _Richie_ of all people and he’ll go back to his wife, but because Richie is convinced the state of New York doesn’t want to let him go. Why would it? It’s Eddie Kaspbrak. But in the same way that Derry didn’t want to let them go, didn’t want to let them see to get over state lines and into someplace irrelevant—what the fuck happens in New Hampshire, anyway?—New York means something to Eddie.

Very dangerously while driving, and in a way that Eddie would not approve of if he were awake to see it, Richie fucks around with the GPS a little bit trying to figure out how long it’ll take them to get out of New York from here.

The gist seems to be, on I-90? Over nine hours.

“Oh, no no no no,” Richie murmurs to himself, because that won’t do. If they’re not allowed to get out of the car for a full ten hours, Eddie’s going to actually kill Richie. He checks how long it'll take to get across New York, starting at the very edge of Massachusetts.

Six and a half hours. Not great. Definitely not something Richie feels great about, no matter how well he claimed he was feeling. He’s still got aches and pains everywhere, and a lingering concern that Stan is going to take over his mouth and punish him for eating junk food (or food at all). None of that shit was kosher, he's sure.

Three hours, though. From Portsmouth to Stockbridge at four in the morning. That he can do.

So Richie—taking one last glance at Eddie, who is obligingly not bursting into horror movie giggles in his sleep—gathers his nerve and drives.

Eddie wakes up in Massachusetts, when Richie pulls into the parking lot of a cheapass motel.

“Nn?” he asks intelligibly.

It is not at all adorable, Richie tells himself sternly.

“Fine,” he says. “Go back to sleep.”

He doesn’t have Bill Denbrough’s conviction, but Eddie is tired, so he accepts it. Richie parks, gets out, and locks the car doors behind him with an electronic beep.

He can’t believe Eddie Kaspbrak drives a fuckin’ Cadillac, except for how he absolutely can believe it. It’s just too much car.

He goes into the rental office of the motel that will definitely be the centerpiece of his next murder trial—except he’ll be the victim there, and he’s too tired to care right now, that’s a problem for Future Richie—and tries to rent a room.

“Only single vacancy,” the clerk says. He has approximately eight miles of beard and looks the way Richie feels, which is weird, because how many dudes get exonerated for murder and then possessed on the same day?

Richie’s brain is not firing on all cylinders, or even half the cylinders it usually gets by with. “What does that mean?” he asks.

“One room left, and it’s got a queen-size bed. Will that work?”

He parked the car a distance from this rental office with its dirty windows; this guy hasn’t seen Eddie in the passenger seat. Richie sighs and grimaces.

“Yeah, that’ll work.”

After Richie’s paid and accepted his keys, the clerk frowns at him.

“Aren’t you that comedian?” he asks.

Richie shakes his head. “Me? No, I’m not funny. Thank you!” He waves with the keys in hand and goes back to the car.

When he knocks on Eddie’s car window Eddie startles awake with a full-on zombie-resurrecting jumpscare, horror movie gasp and all. Richie immediately crouches to about half his height and holds up his hands in the universal _don’t shoot_.

“Whoa, hey hey hey, buddy, it’s just me. Like, real me, for real.”

Eddie puts a hand on his chest and takes several deep breaths.

“Can I get you, like, an aspirin?” Richie asks. "You wanna chew an aspirin?"

A flicker of Eddie’s personality reappears as he rolls his eyes. Then he pulls the latch to unlock his door and opens it enough that Richie has to back up to get out of the way. “Are we sleeping?”

“I mean right now, no, but I have acquired for you—” He holds up the motel room keys. “—the finest flat surface currently available, and it is probably not _entirely _covered in hornets, so like, will that work?”

“Fine,” Eddie says. He lugs one of his suitcases and his big toiletry case.

Richie takes his own and Eddie’s other suitcase with rolled eyes. He puts on his best Alfred Pennyworth and mutters, “Very good, sir,” as they climb the stairs. If Eddie has any comments when Richie opens the door onto a single bed, he doesn’t say them—he just throws himself facedown on the rough brown blanket, right in the middle of the mattress.

Richie closes the door behind them and raises his eyebrows. “Uh, even I wouldn’t do that, Eduardo.”

“Don’t care,” Eddie replies. He’s like a little kid, ready to sleep where he dropped.

“Okay, but like, you better move over, I’m an actual full-size human being and you Kewpie dolls gotta make room, it’s the law.”

Eddie grumbles and rolls to the left—which Richie has already mentally assigned as ‘Eddie’s side of the bed,’ something he didn’t know about himself until he watched Eddie occupy it.

“Do you wanna take your shoes off and act like a person or anything, or…?” Richie manages over his internal monologue, which is one long exasperated scream.

“Fuck off, Richie.”

“O-fucking-kay, princess.” Richie gives up and crouches to where Eddie’s legs are sticking off the end of the bed and starts untying his shoes. “You smell just like your mom.”

Eddie wakes up a little more and says clearly, “Eat a bag of dicks, Richie.”

Which sends Richie into only _slightly_ hysterical laughter, leaning with his forehead on Eddie’s outstretched calf. He levers Eddie’s shoes off his feet and stands up. “Okay, but at least get under the blankets so you don’t wake up tomorrow morning screaming bloody murder.”

He goes over and draws the curtains over the single window. A very large spider drops from the folded fabric and Richie has a moment of _Oh jesus!_ before he realizes it’s already curled and dead.

Oh yeah. Eddie’s definitely going to kill him in the morning.

He turns out the light, leaves his court clothes in a heap on top of his shoes, and rolls into the other side of the bed as gingerly as he can. He feels like he has a lot more knee and elbow than he did before he tried to lie down. Eddie’s face is visibly mashed into the pillow so that his mouth is not just pouting, but in fish-face mode. It is… adorable. That’s adorable. It's hilarious, but it's adorable. Richie _adores_.

Richie rolls over to turn his back to him, already knowing that Eddie hogs the bed and clings like a limpet and so he’s going to be riding the edge of the mattress all night, but he’ll take it.

Richie dreams, this time.

Eddie wakes up to someone shoving an elbow in his gut and then a thud as Richie rolls straight out of the bed. Considering that up until the elbow strike and the sudden loss of his heat source he was actually quite comfortable, he’s dazed for a few moments, until he realizes that what he heard after getting hit and right before Richie dropped was_ “No we can still help him!”_

For a moment Richie just lays there. So Eddie rolls over the side of the bed and experimentally pokes him in the shoulder. His skin is hot to the touch.

Richie says, “Mrf.”

“Did you throw out your back again?” Eddie asks.

Richie shudders and then slowly sits up. He is wearing boxers and nothing else; Eddie is sure he would have noticed if that had happened while he was awake. He’s also minus his glasses, so he looks squinty and vulnerable there on the floor.

“Didn’t throw out my back again,” he says, but the way he massages his back as he says it is not encouraging. He also has to thrust his chest forward a little bit to reach behind himself, and Eddie keeps his eyes firmly on Richie’s face. After a moment he tilts his head to the side, smirks, and says, “So did you just want the entire bed to yourself, or?”

“Hey, fuck you, you elbowed me in the stomach,” Eddie says. He scrunches down slightly to pull up sheets and blanket to check and realizes he’s still wearing the clothes that got rain soaked, so of course he’s cold without Richie, but he also doesn’t think he can just start stripping right now. Logically he knows he’s not going to catch the flu or pneumonia from this, but also logically he knows Richie’s not gonna like (_throw him down and ravish him_) do anything if Eddie starts taking off clothes either. He drops his arms, deciding to err on the side of inaction.

Richie grimaces and says, “Sorry, I thought you were Ben.”

Eddie frowns. “Why did you want to hit Ben?”

“For—stealing all the protein powder, move over, it’s fucking cold down here.”

Eddie scoots backwards on the mattress and rolls onto his back as Richie stands (_legs surprisingly hairy_) and gets back in the bed. He also takes a majority of the blankets with him as he goes, and once Richie’s prone again he gives Eddie a look and starts tugging at the edge of Eddie’s cocoon. Eddie rolls his eyes and relinquishes, like, a quarter of the blanket. Richie scowls further and keeps tugging. Eddie releases half the blanket, but he’s not getting any of the sheets.

Richie turns over so that his back is to Eddie, gives a low and very animal-sounding sigh, and visibly sinks into the mattress.

Eddie reaches out and pokes Richie in the back, low and to the right of his spine. Richie flinches.

“The fuck, man?”

“Did that hurt?”

“No, keep your hands to yourself.”

Stung in a way he can’t articulate, Eddie retracts his hand. It’s dark and dreamy and warm in here, and he tries to shut his eyes and go back to sleep. Richie’s lying rigid on the edge of the mattress, distracting in how he’s trying to be of no notice whatsoever. Richie Tozier so frequently works to be the center of attention that when he doesn’t it’s a bigger red flag than anything else he could throw up.

Pun not intended.

“Who can we still help?” Eddie murmurs in the dark.

Richie’s shoulders go impossibly stiffer. “No,” he says. There’s no sleep in his voice, just that iron snap he used to try to fight with Eddie at the rest area.

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.”

Richie never shuts up, but somehow he thinks he has the right to shut Eddie down? Eddie presses further. “Was it the dead—”

Richie rolls back over, up and onto his right elbow immediately and looms over Eddie in the dark, his face very close.

“No,” he says. His breath washes over Eddie’s face—still traces of mint under the thick coating of sleep in his mouth.

Eddie blinks once, having a moment to take in exactly how close Richie is and how he’s half over him in the dark, and then his entire spine just liquefies. It’s thicker, headier, more uncontrollable than want; Eddie goes from zero to one hundred-twenty in the space of two breaths and he aches from his jaw to his knees and goes pliant on the mattress. Like Richie just turned a key and Eddie’s body _came alive_ under him. Eddie can’t even do anything except hang on to the edges of his sheets and tremble. There’s no air between them. His ribcage tightens and his breathing speeds but it’s not the panicky _you’re about to die!_ that made him want his inhaler. It’s _please please please touch me, I don’t care how, kiss me, lay on me, anything, I might die if you don’t_. No inhaler to reach for, just _Richie._

He can’t tell if Richie feels him shaking but all of a sudden Richie pulls back and rolls back over. “Sorry,” he mutters as he goes, and drags the blanket back up over his shoulders.

There’s barely any space between them, but what’s there has gone cold already. Half of Eddie wants to plaster himself against Richie’s back, but the other half is terrified Richie will realize how _hard_ Eddie just got, _this actually hurts_, _why_ is he still sleeping in pants with a zipper? But like hell he’s going to take them off now.

Into the silence Richie takes a deep breath and then says in a high performative voice, “So my girlfriend caught me masturbating to her friend’s—”

Eddie grabs hold of Richie’s pillow, yanks it out from under his head, and tries to break the national batting average record with it. “I fucking _knew_ there had to be some kind of supernatural cause for you getting any stage time at all, your jokes are _shit_, what the fuck, Richie?”

Richie is laughing as he half-heartedly tries to ward off Eddie’s blows. “So you’re a fan.”

“I am _not_ a fan.”

“You know, a guy who didn’t know my jokes probably wouldn’t say ‘I fucking knew you didn’t write your own material’ the first time we met up, you watched my shit, you’re a fan.”

“I am _not a fucking fan_.” Eddie bashes Richie with the pillow one last time, then steals it and tucks it to his chest. Then he remembers that this is a motel pillow and throws it back at Richie like it’s burned him.

The pillow lands over Richie’s ear.

“Ya done?” Richie asks.

“God I hate this fucking place,” Eddie mutters. “I can’t believe you let me fall asleep in these clothes, I’m going to get _pneumonia_ and then I’m going to have to have antibiotics _and_ a tetanus shot from this fucking room—”

“_Let_ you?” Richie repeats. “Buddy, if you want to get naked you can do that your own damn self, the extent of my responsibility was making sure you didn’t have your shoes on and that you were under the covers and not laying on anything that would show up under a blacklight.”

The words _get naked_ seem to vibrate in the air. Eddie closes his eyes and presses his forehead into Richie’s shoulder. “Whatever. Shut up. Go to sleep. It’s still your fault.”

“So what else is new,” Richie says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this a slowburn? Is this how you write a slowburn? These men are so stupid, why am I doing this?


	6. Inadvisable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie encourages Eddie's self-indulgences and denies his own. Eddie does some auto maintenance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I know how this is going to end now! I know what's going to happen! There are steps to take, steps!
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: Richie makes a gay joke with offensive terminology, discussion and evidence of domestic abuse (Tom Rogan), and an upsetting amount of blood.

Eddie doesn’t kill Richie in the morning.

But it is a near thing.

First of all, Richie wakes to the feeling of a palm slapping onto the base of his skull and Eddie’s high-pitched most-irritated voice saying, _“Richie!”_

He puts his arms over his head to shield himself. “Fuck!” he replies eloquently.

Eddie sounds like he's melting down on the other side of the bed; the next thing Richie knows there are sheets flung over his face.

“It’s after noon!” Eddie says. He sounds just like he did when he was a kid, high and frantic and _cute cute cute_. Richie waits for the inevitable. Eddie doesn’t disappoint him. There’s a thud that Richie strongly suspects is Eddie colliding with the furniture, and then he’s demanding, “Where the fuck are we? Why is it _disgusting_ in here?”

Richie feels he did Eddie a courtesy by leaving his socks on. “Haven’t you ever slept in a trashy motel?” he mumbles. It feels like his voice comes up from somewhere in the vicinity of his navel, it takes so long to get out and comes out like he’s still half-asleep. Which he is.

_“No! For health and safety reasons, Richie!”_

He rolls over onto his back and swats the sheets down from his face so he can watch Eddie frantically ripping into his toiletry bag.

Richie grins and teases, “You didn’t even brush your teeth last night.”

Eddie slowly turns to look at him, with his eyes perfectly round and white and the strings from _Psycho_ shrieking in the background.

“It’s _after noon_, Richie. _After. Noon._”

This is entirely too much drama considering they didn’t even get to bed until after four in the morning. “Yeah, but it’s like, nine, in California,” Richie says.

“We’re not _getting_ to California tonight, even _Omaha_ is another _twenty hours_.” Eddie grabs his toothbrush, turns toward the bathroom, and visibly recoils.

“How do you know that?” Richie asks. He gets his elbows under him and sits up, watching Eddie play chicken with whatever fresh hell is waiting in the bathroom. “You were not _compos mentis_ last night, how do you know where we are?”

Eddie stares at him, all sound and fury dissolved now, for several long seconds. Then he says quickly, _“I don’t know,”_ and vanishes into the bathroom. The door shuts behind him. Richie hears Eddie saying, _“Ew, ew, ew_.”

He lets himself slump back on the bed—he didn’t fuck up his back last night, or at least it doesn’t feel like it, since he can move—and reaches over to the bedside table to put on his glasses. There’s a low flat clock there, with digital numbers that flip by on a rotation when the minute changes. Richie squints at it and sees that it’s actually after one.

He raises his voice slightly. “Hey, your phone clock is still off from doing the time warp last night.”

There’s a pause and then Eddie lets out an animal shriek.

Richie flops back into the bed and chuckles to himself like an idiot.

Eddie drives first.

They’re about to cross the state line into New York, and while they’re going to be avoiding the City they’ll still have to follow I-90 west from Albany to Buffalo, and then follow along Lake Erie. It’s not that Eddie thinks Richie can’t be trusted to drive in upstate New York, it’s that he needs to look at the road so he isn’t stuck looking at Richie the whole time.

“Because I have experience driving in this area, and it’s my goddamn car, Richie!” he sputters out.

Richie hasn’t bothered to go digging in his suitcase for his toothbrush and is instead making do with the travel toothbrush—which is barely acceptable, because they are technically traveling. Eddie is waiting on him to get out of the bathroom so that he can take his chances with the shattered ceramic and concerning rust stains in the bottom of the bathtub.

“Fine, fine.” Richie spits in the sink. Eddie scrunches up his face more out of habit than true disgust; it’s the principle of the thing. Richie turns the tap back on and starts rinsing. “Do you want breakfast or something?”

“Do you mean_ lunch?_ Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Because I did, at ass o’clock in the morning, by punching you,” Richie says, looking at Eddie like _he’s_ the moron.

Eddie didn’t even know that the sun had come up in their room, since the curtains turned out to be of the blackout variety; he didn’t realize how late it was until he checked his phone. He doesn’t know what time it was that Richie had his nightmare, either, only that it took far longer than it should have for Eddie to get back to sleep. And Eddie still woke up plastered to Richie’s back, which was _disconcertingly_ sweaty and not at _all _comforting _or_ appealing, thank you very much. If they had taken their cues from when they woke up, would they be almost to Pennsylvania right now?

Eddie is sure he’s blushing, but the lighting in this room is so bad he can only hope Richie can’t tell. “I slept for _twelve hours, Richie_.”

Richie runs his tongue across his teeth. Checking for plaque is not hot, Eddie reminds himself. Then Richie looks over at him incredulously. “And?”

“And—and—and we’re not kids anymore! We’re old! We’re supposed to need less sleep! You threw your back out, we’re not fucking teenagers waking up at seven PM—”

“Okay, even I never woke up at seven PM unless I was drunk or high the night before, what the fuck did _you_ get up to in college?” Richie asks with what looks like genuine curiosity.

“Nothing,” Eddie says stubbornly. “I don’t want breakfast.” He wants to get on the road. He wonders where Bev and Ben are by now.

“Sucks for you then, because I do,” Richie says. “Can I take the car while you do your primping?”

“You’re going to insult me and then ask for my keys? Really?” A stifled memory floats to the top of Eddie’s head and he says, “Did you call me _princess_?”

“No, I said _primping_, get your ears checked, old man.”

“Not _now_, I mean last night, when we got in here, did you call me _princess_?”

Richie shrugs. “I don’t remember.” He looks from left to right around the bathroom, and then leans over to stare into the bathtub. “This is gross.”

“Fucking duh, Richie.”

Richie considers and then holds his hand out toward the tub, crouching slightly.

“Don’t _touch_ it, what’s wrong with you?”

Richie pauses, hovering with his hand over the tub. He makes eye contact with Eddie and says, “Give me the keys, or I will put my hand in this bathtub, and then I will touch you with it.”

Eddie gives him the keys.

Richie comes back twenty minutes later with a bang on the door. Eddie—who had to lay a towel down in the bottom of the tub in order to bring himself to stand in there for the duration of his shower—is in the process of pulling his shirt on. Richie opens the door with his keys and strides in casually, paper bag in hand.

_“Close the damn door!”_ Eddie snarls.

Richie’s face immediately snaps up toward the ceiling and he shuts his eyes. He also closes the damn door. “Are you decent?”

He tugs the hem of his shirt into place and reaches for his jacket. “Now I am,” he says. “Jeez.”

Richie doesn’t smile; instead he puts his left elbow out and leans on the wall, brown paper bag hovering at the level of his shoulder. He looks almost hurt. “I’m not going to _do anything _to you,” he says.

Eddie, who _just_ got his whole vasovagal system under control, feels the tell-tale burn in his face again. “I know you’re not going to do anything,” he mutters. Richie has proven that over and over again, hasn’t he, when Eddie grabbed him by the necktie and in the car outside the airport and last night leaning over Eddie in the dark. He tries to feel a little bit less _please do something to me_.

“You sure? ’Cause you’re coming off a little ‘scared of the ass bandit,’” Richie replies.

If he wasn’t blushing before, he definitely is now. He jerks his collar into place and smooths his sleeves down. “I’m not scared of you, and that’s offensive.”

Richie looks unconvinced, but he lets it go. Instead he holds up the bag. “I got something that’ll scare _and _offend you.”

It takes Eddie a moment to recognize those distinctive golden arches.

“No,” Eddie says.

Richie waggles the bag back and forth. “Come on, Eds.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Come _on_, Eds,” he singsongs. “It’s an Egg McMuffin! It’s practically a staple of American culture!”

“They have McDonalds in other countries, Richie, you’re just being narcissistic _as usual_—”

“Come _o-on_, you know you _want to_.” And it’s not his sleep-gravelly voice from earlier, but his knowing little smile is equally convincing.

Eddie stares at the bag, but all he ate last night was convenience store junk food. This is a step up, but only just; there’s protein in there.

“Fine,” Eddie mutters.

He takes one of the two cardboard boxes. There’s also a container of fries in there. All the grease and salt, ready to wreak havoc on his arteries and his cholesterol levels and his blood pressure, sets his mouth watering, because his body is stupid and doesn’t know what’s good for it. Eddie sits on the dresser because he’s not touching that bed again, and takes tiny ginger bites, trying not to gag.

Richie, on the other hand, practically inhales his own Egg McMuffin and then looks at the bathroom door. “Gonna shower,” he says.

Eddie chews and swallows. “Fine,” he repeats. It’s fine. Everything is fine. He can just sit here and eat his breakfast sandwich and not worry about anything but getting on the road.

Richie lumbers into the bathroom and closes the door. After a moment Eddie hears him say, “Did you soak my towel in the shower?”

_Shit._ “Oh. Yeah.”

Richie emerges from the bathroom again, still fully dressed, and glares at Eddie. He crosses the room, grabs the wet towel Eddie left on the end of the bed, returns to the bathroom, and closes the door behind him.

Eddie finishes his Egg McMuffin and starts on the fries and thinks of nothing but salt and grease.

Richie fucks with the radio.

He doesn’t get a full-on puking session and Stan never speaks to him through any static, but when he gives up on messing with the dial he takes to pressing the_ Seek_ button on the console.

“Does this song mean anything to you?”

“No,” Eddie says.

He skips to the next station.

“This song?”

“No.”

He skips again.

“This song?”

“Yes.”

It sounds like a techno version of an angel singing the word “_nobody_” into a silver bell over and over again.

“Really?” Richie asks.

“Yes, it’s the song that was playing when I committed vehicular homicide and drove my car into a barrier, killing my passenger Richard Tozier instantly, Richie, is that what you want to hear?”

_“I’ve been big and small and big and small and…_”

Richie gives up and sits back in his seat. He guesses they’re listening to this, then, because if he touches the radio again Eddie’s going to karate chop his hand right off.

_“…big and small again, and still nobody wants me, still nobody wants me.”_

He looks from the radio to Eddie, who is still staring straight ahead and seems to have nothing to say about the nature of memory or anything.

_“And I know no one will save me, I’m just asking for a kiss, give me one good movie kiss and I’ll be all right—_”

“Actually, fuck this,” Eddie says, and pushes the power button on the radio.

Richie’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline without his permission, but he leans back and pretends he’s thinking anything other than _so it’s like that, then_.

They call Ben and Bev.

Ben picks up this time, on Bev’s phone. “Hey, Bev’s driving.”

“Very responsible of you, good sir,” Richie says into the car speakerphone; he clearly doesn’t know how to use this piece of technology.

“What time did you get on the road?” Eddie asks them.

Richie rolls his eyes.

“Around eight,” Ben replies.

“Oh, have you passed Erie yet?” Eddie asks.

Richie turns his head to face out the window.

“The lake or the city?”

“The city.”

“City yes, lake no,” Ben replies. “Why, where are you?”

“Oh, we’re in fucking Albany,” Eddie replies. “Because Richie doesn’t believe in alarm clocks.”

“_I’m _not the one who slept for twelve hours,” Richie says.

There’s a definite smile in Ben’s voice when he asks, “Where did you stay?”

“This crapville motel in eastern Massachusetts,” Eddie replies. “I’m going home and I’m boiling my feet, Ben, I’m boiling my feet.”

There’s the indistinct sweet sound of Bev’s voice in the background and then Ben says, “Bev says you should just go get a pedicure and they’ll exfoliate all the dead skin off.”

“I don’t get pedicures,” Eddie says. “You can get HPV from those footbaths.”

Richie turns back around. “_That’s_ why you don’t get pedicures? That’s the reason?”

“Have you ever had a plantar wart, Richie?”

“No! And neither has anyone else on planet Earth!”

“It’s a real thing, okay? It’s a real thing, and it’s not worth going and getting a foot massage and to have someone else clip your toenails if you’re going to contract a fatal infection from misaimed cuticle clippers, Richie.”

“Oh, yeah, literally boiling your feet is a thousand times safer!”

_“I wasn’t being literal, you moron—”_

“Sounds like things are going great,” Ben says easily. “Are you planning to go through Omaha on your way home?”

_Home_. The word pierces right through Eddie's chest. He adjusts his grip on the steering wheel and says, “Planning on it, yeah.”

“Stay at my place,” Ben says. “We can all get dinner.”

“Aren’t you some kind of famous hermit?” Richie asks. “There are articles. I’ve read the articles about you, Ben.”

_Oh, so you’re a fan, _Richie said in the dark, with Eddie still all lit up but fading next to him.

“Don’t believe the articles,” Ben says. “I heard one art critic called my work ‘a testament to the glory of the phallus.’” Richie dissolves into hoots of laughter, through which it is difficult to hear Ben finish, “I’m just an offensive proponent of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity, I hear.”

“Hey, I’m less intelligent than _Seinfeld_,” Richie says. “Fucking _Seinfeld_.”

“Well, we all knew that,” Eddie says.

“No, seriously, they said I ripped off everything but ‘the intelligence,’ that’s the standard comedy is being held to these days.”

“You know I ripped off my BBC tower,” Ben says.

“Yeah, but you steal like an artist, man,” Richie says.

“I think we’ll get there tomorrow,” Eddie says. “If we stop at a decent time, stay in a _normal hotel_, and get up before _one in the goddamn afternoon tomorrow, Richie_, we might even get there before dinnertime, Ben.”

“I’d say I’ll set you a place, but I don’t think I have any food in the damn house,” Ben replies. “I hope not, anyway, it’d all be rotting by now. I know where to take you, though, so don’t worry about getting in late, we’ll wait up. Well, I shouldn’t say that, I’ll wait up.”

More of Bev’s voice, slightly more emphatic.

“Bev will wait up too,” Ben says.

Once off the phone, Richie reads the text messages Bill and Mike sent in the last twelve hours—Mike’s “_landed in Florida!”_ and Bill’s “_guess who’s sleeping on an airport floor tonight?”_ and the ensuing discussion. Eddie shudders at the very idea.

To keep Richie from touching the radio, Eddie actually has to talk to him. This helps the trip across New York go by pretty quickly, though it wreaks havoc on Eddie’s blood pressure. Richie doesn’t seem to want to stop bickering either, and every time Eddie asks if he needs to stop and use the restroom or anything, or if they should get dinner, Richie essentially goes_ No, and another thing_. When Eddie stops for gas, he turns around and sees Richie peering out of the passenger window at him, much like a raccoon through a sliding glass door.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Eddie asks.

“Nothing, what’s your problem?” Richie asks. He stays pretty alert and combative throughout New York, but almost as soon as they cross the state line into Pennsylvania his head tips back across the headrest and he sighs.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Richie says. “Let’s get, like, food or something, and then I’ll take a shift.”

“I want to beat Lake Erie by tonight,” Eddie warns.

“What does that even mean?”

“I want to get at least to Toledo.” He’s mapping it out in his head; it’s another almost eleven hours from Toledo to Omaha, and depending on how far they’re able to drive before they stop—Richie can probably do the four hours from Erie through Cleveland to the edge of the lake, and if Eddie sleeps through that he can take another shift without his eyes rebelling on him again.

“Very good, sir,” Richie says in a British accent. It’s unexpected but sounds familiar.

They stop at a rest area outside of Erie.

Richie does the whole shuffle—voids his bladder, scrubs his hands and then the stress sweat from driving through New York off his temples, buys a bottle of overpriced water from a vending machine. Eddie definitely thought he was weird, but harnessing his absolute need to be driving and the way that, because Bev and Ben were so much further ahead of them, they were definitely behind schedule, Richie was able to keep him mostly in the car.

He did have to pee since, like, Syracuse, though. That was a strain to keep to himself. That and _I fucking hate New York _every twenty seconds.

They pull over and eat at a diner in Pennsylvania that has the dubious virtue of still being open at eleven at night. Eddie eats quickly, practically vibrating through the meal with the urge to get back in the car and on schedule.

“Hey, Señor Control Issues, calm your tits,” Richie says. “Sit down and eat your damn fries.”

Eddie demolishes his fries—just like he did the ones Richie brought back from McDonalds this morning, _ha!_—and then sits there staring at Richie while Richie tries to eat his burger like any other asshole at an Eat’n’Park at eleven at night. Apparently he loses interest in this pretty quickly, because he picks up his phone and starts tapping away at the screen, visibly bored with waiting for Richie to finish his meal.

“Anything new from them?” Richie asks, meaning Bill and Mike and Ben and Bev.

“No,” Eddie replies, and then grins widely down at the screen.

Richie squints at him. “What.”

Eddie takes a deep breath and then reads aloud, “‘T-bone: A very abnormally’—_tall,_ that says tall—'_tall_ male specimen who has a very small’—and then I think that face is winking.”

Richie rolls his eyes and lets half his burger thunk down onto his plate, losing his last bit of tomato in the process. “I am a normally tall man, you’re just stunted.”

“‘Also has scary, scary deep male voice and likes to date girls with similar-sounding names. Examples: Jessie, Jaycee, Josie. Will _ten-tenths_ screw you over.” He looks up from his phone, smiling and visibly proud of himself.

Richie swallows the food in his mouth, opens the back of his throat, and thrusts his lower palate forward. In his _I-am-Satan-Lord-of-Darkness _voice, he growls, _“I am a normal-sized man with a normal-sized winky face.”_

Eddie startles so hard that he knocks over his water glass and giggles the whole time he’s cleaning it up. “Only normal-sized? Not above average? Not a fucking python?”

Richie takes another bite of his burger and says, in his normal voice, “To what are you referring? I thought we were talking about—” He overdoes his wink, turning his head to an angle and scrunching up the whole right half of his face, playing all the way to the back of the restaurant. Then he relaxes his face and lifts his eyebrows in polite inquiry.

Eddie blushes and drops his sodden napkin on his empty plate.

Richie smirks and finishes his meal.

He takes the next leg of driving, and he was right to do so, because Eddie’s held tilts back and he falls asleep like anyone staring at the same view for ten hours straight would. Richie gets them to Toledo by two in the morning, at which point Eddie snaps open almost supernaturally and sits up.

“Where are we?”

“We beat Lake Erie,” Richie says. “I mean, technically I did, but you helped.”

He’s both surprised and relieved that Eddie isn’t the kind of driver who wants to switch off every two hours to keep their eyes fresh, because that would have made the trip through New York even worse.

Eddie yawns. “Do you want to stop?”

Richie looks at him and says, “No, man, I haven’t even been awake for twelve hours and I started out the day with you literally hitting me upside the head. I can at least take us another four hours, you drove through all of New York.”

“Take 80 towards Joliet,” Eddie says. “Don’t take us up to Chicago.”

“Do you have fucking MapQuest in your head?” Richie asks, genuinely curious. “How the fuck do you know all this?”

“It’s basic geography, Richie.” He yawns again, looking soft and sleepy but with his brows furrowing as he tries to think through it. _Cute cute cute._ Richie stuffs that deep down. “That’ll take us to, like, six in the morning. You want to pull an all-nighter?”

“I mean, depending on what Radio Stanley allows me to listen to, maybe,” Richie says, when actually he’s thinking _I can’t be trusted in a bed with you_. “And assuming that nothing fucking bananas happens with the relationship of time to space, yeah, I can do that.”

Eddie’s agreeable and faintly confused; he closes his eyes again. “Okay. But wake me up if you need me to take over.”

“Aye aye, Captain Spaghetti Monster.” He doesn’t even know where the fuck that came from, but it was definitely him; he might be a little punchier than he thought.

“Are you going to be tired when we get to Ben’s?” Eddie asks.

“I mean, I’m always tired, I have been since I turned, like, twenty-two,” Richie says. “Why, do you know where Ben’s house is off the top of your head? Is that in your magical Kaspbrak Atlas, too?”

“It’s in _Architectural Digest_,” Eddie says.

Richie frowns and asks, “They put Ben’s home address in a magazine?”

“No, but I’ve seen it, I know where it is.”

“You’ve—you’ve seen Ben’s house? In a magazine? And you think you can find your way there?”

“I mean, probably,” Eddie says, eyes still shut. “We can call him tomorrow, get more specific.”

Richie is fascinated. “What else can you find just by looking at it? Barbra Streisand’s mansion? The Playboy playhouse? Those restaurants they take contestants to learn from on _Top Chef_?”

“Put on the radio,” Eddie says.

Richie obeys and the word _“Nobody, nobody, nobody_” comes bubbling out of the speakers again. Eddie opens his eyes, startled. Richie punches the_ Seek_ button. Alphaville’s “Forever Young” fills the car instead.

“Does this have any personal meaning for you?”

“I mean, aside from Stan? No,” Eddie says, and drifts off again.

Richie waits until the song has ended and Spandau Ballet of all things has come on, and Eddie’s breathing has gone rhythmic and steady, before he whispers, “Stan?”

But nothing happens.

Eddie wakes up in a different time zone.

Also almost to Iowa, which is just as disconcerting . Richie apparently ignored what Eddie meant to suggest last night about stopping in Joliet and switching, after four hours, and plowed straight on. It’s about eight in the morning, and they’re just about to cross the Mississippi River.

“Morning, sunshine,” Richie says. For some reason the radio is playing Eddie Money and he looks very red-eyed.

“I told you to wake me!” Eddie says, horrified. And then he says, “What are you listening to?”

Richie looks the way Eddie always imagined the main character in Edgar Allan Poe’s _The Telltale Heart_. He turns his head toward Eddie as though the vertebrae aren’t quite cooperating, and his eyes show all the whites around the edges.

“It keeps repeating,” he says.

“What, ‘Take Me Home Tonight’?”

“Yes,” Richie says. “But not just that. ‘Forever Young.’ ‘Holding out for a Hero.’ Spandau Ballet. Paul Simon. ‘Video Killed the Radio Star.’ It starts at Alphaville, and then it cycles all the way to Bonnie Tyler, and then it comes back around. And it’s on every station. I haven’t heard a commercial in ten hours. This is the seventh time it’s played.”

“Why didn’t you just turn the radio off?”

“Because there was no one to talk to but Stan, and I can’t puke and operate a motor vehicle at the same time,” Richie says.

He definitely looks like he should not be operating a motor vehicle right now.

“Let’s swap,” Eddie says. He delicately reaches out toward the radio, as if Richie is liable to bite him, and turns it off.

They stop in Davenport. Richie is practically twitching as he shuffles into the gas station, goes into the bathroom, and hopefully splashes some water on his face. Eddie, who is anxious about taking his travel toothbrush into a gas station bathroom, buys a second one and a tiny packet of toothpaste, and a couple pastries from a rack with a heat lamp.

Richie comes back out looking marginally more human. He eyes Eddie’s purchases, listens to the explanation, and then asks, “Haven’t you ever brushed your teeth with bottled water?”

That would have been the obvious choice, but now Eddie is the owner of a third toothbrush. “Oh,” he says.

They’re only five or so hours away from Omaha. Eddie instructs Richie to text Ben, on the off-chance that he and Bev are asleep in a hotel room somewhere or in a busy restaurant. He adjusts the driver’s seat, pulling it forward so he can reach the pedals again, and then stretches his arms behind his back until his shoulderblades push together. He’s too old to sleep all night in cars. He wouldn’t have done it if Richie hadn’t suggested it.

_No freaking wonder he doesn’t want to get back in a hotel room with you, after how jumpy you were this morning._

They call Ben around ten in the morning.

Bev picks up on his phone. “Hello, boys,” she says.

“Beverly my dear!” Richie says loudly into the car speaker.

“Hi, Bev,” Eddie says. “I’m calling to ask for Ben’s address. We’re passing Des Moines.”

There’s a moment of pause and then Bev says, “Hang on, I’m putting you on speakerphone.” There’s a click and then her voice, a little further away and with more background static, says, “They’re in Des Moines.”

“How are they in Des Moines?” Ben asks.

“Richie Tozier has no impulse control,” Eddie says.

“Title of my next special,” says Richie.

“Well, if you’re already in Des Moines, I think you might actually beat us there,” Ben says.

Something unlocks inside Eddie’s chest and he relaxes a little bit. Ben gives him the address and Richie puts it into the GPS.

They do beat Ben and Bev, by about forty minutes. As soon as Eddie comes within sight of the house—which is rurally located enough to have _Route_ in the street address, Richie leans over into the window and says, “No fucking way.”

“We should have expected this,” Eddie admits.

The house is long, low, and looks almost flat, studded in parts with two chimneys. A long stone fence leading up from the road runs straight into the walls, differentiated only by height and the presence of a very shiny hipped roof on top. There are three garage doors, a long stretch of blank wall, and then a series of tiny steps leading up to the glass front doors. Both the garage and the entryway are studded by plants in large terracotta urns.

Richie is already calling Ben back.

“What the fuck, man?” he says into the phone.

Eddie can faintly hear Beverly laughing.

“Do you know how I live, Hanscom? Is this what the inside of your head looks like? You’ve just got a big _rock_ sitting out here at the corner of your driveway, what _is_ that, why do you need a big rock when you have _three garages_?”

“Ask him where I should park,” Eddie says.

“Where the fuck is Eddie supposed to put his Frisco Bay dad car?” Richie asks.

Eddie’s mouth pops open in completely unfeigned offense.

There’s a moment where Richie just listens to the phone, too distracted to make eye contact with Eddie, and then he unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car. “Right,” he says, and slams the busted passenger door behind him. Eddie watches through the windshield as Richie goes over and starts touching bricks. Apparently he finds what he’s looking for, because the next thing Eddie knows Richie has uncovered a keypad and is punching in a code.

One of the three garage doors rolls up. The space inside is unoccupied. Eddie looks at Richie for approval and Richie waves him forward with his left hand, his right still holding the phone to his ear. Eddie hears him say, “That’s really sad, man.”

The inner door to the house is locked, but the garage is habitable enough. Richie unearths some folding lawn chairs and then inspects both the fridge and a large freezer. He opens the latter and immediately closes it: “Either Ben buys his beef locally, or he’s a Hannibal and he murdered a guy.”

“What?” Eddie asks.

“There’s like, _so_ much shrink-wrapped meat in there, man,” Richie says. He opens the fridge and helps himself to one of Ben’s beers. He holds the bottle out in Eddie’s direction, but Eddie shakes his head.

Eddie sits gingerly on a folding lawn chair and they talk for forty minutes about a show on Comedy Central that Richie apparently studies religiously. Eddie has never heard of this, because he does not watch Comedy Central. Richie again insists that Eddie is a fan of his work, implies that Eddie jerked off to his TV appearances, and then without pause launches into an an analysis of the theory of comedy.

“—because it’s the art of managing tension,” Richie says. He looks a little bit less crazy than he did when Eddie woke up this morning, but he also looks like he’s had far more than the one beer. “And Jordan Peele’s really great at that, man, because if you have the tension and you break it, it’s comedy, and if you have the tension and you just hold it? That’s horror. Look.”

They then watch several clips, including a truly frightening encounter an airplane passenger has with a flight attendant, followed by a dancer learning on-air that his whole family has been murdered.

Eddie is feeling like he understands Richie’s efforts to be funny (_“I hope it's a puppy.”_) a lot better now when Ben and Bev pull up. The truck does not match the distinctly modern house. Ben parks it in front of one of the other closed garage doors and Bev jumps down first. She’s wearing bright red lipstick and looks torn between staring around in wonder at the house too or saying hello to them. Eddie can’t blame her.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Richie says, standing up. He walks over, hugs her, and kisses the top of her head. Eddie gets up and folds up the lawn chairs but has no idea where Richie got them, so he doesn't know where to put them back.

Ben steps down from the truck looking tired but happy to have company. He says nothing about Richie stealing his beer and simply goes over to the man door to let them into the house.

“Sorry about that. Didn’t think you were going to beat us here,” he says.

“Eddie made it his personal mission to defeat Lake Erie in single combat,” Richie says.

“Richie’s a little tired,” says Eddie. He hugs Bev too.

“Eddie has road rage.”

“I fucking do not!”

“Eddie has general rage.”

“_You’re_ my general rage.”

Ben holds the door open for them. “Go on in. Make yourselves comfortable. I’m gonna bring the truck in, and the bags.”

Eddie remembers the bags and goes back for them, but Richie apparently is not inclined to do so, stepping into the house with Bev.

Ben stops him on his way back to the truck with a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Eddie says, and thinks he almost means it. “You okay?”

“Good as can be expected,” Ben says. He shrugs. “I need a nap. Are you guys okay for now, or should we order a pizza or something for lunch?”

Eddie looks around. “Is there a pizza place that delivers out here?”

“When you tip them right, yeah,” Ben says. “I don’t eat out much.”

“This is the kind of house that has a name.”

“Bohemian Girl,” Ben says. “Don’t tell Richie, it’s named after my mom, but you know how he’ll be.”

“I won’t tell,” Eddie says.

He walks into the house and immediately gets the impression that y_es, Ben Hanscom lives here._ It’s all finished in some kind of red wood, and the floors are done in large red-lacquered tiles. The center of the house is, weirdly, the back porch, which Eddie can see as soon as he walks in because of the massive windows that show a clear white sky and trees far out behind the lot. The building curls into the shape of a horseshoe, and the porch fits in the semicircle outside.

There is also no sign of Richie and Bev.

He sets his suitcases down and calls, “Guys?”

“In here!” Bev calls back, and Eddie follows her voice to the other side of the horseshoe. He pokes his head into an open door.

Bev and Richie have thrown themselves across what is clearly Ben’s bed. Richie is facedown on the charcoal gray duvet; Bev is reclined against a stack of white and charcoal decorative pillows on his left.

“You want your friggin’ bag, Richie?” Eddie asks pointedly.

Richie groans and then rolls over but shows no sign of lifting his head. “Yeah, give me a minute.”

Eddie looks up at the ceiling, waiting. There are little arrow-shaped lights set in the wood panels there. When he feels he’s given Richie enough of a minute, he asks, “Is it your back?”

Richie catapults himself up. “It’s not my fucking back!”

Bev grins at Eddie.

Ben comes in, backpack over his shoulder and wheeling two suitcases. “You look comfortable,” he says. “There’s a guest room, but it’s only a twin bed. The couch is pretty big, though.”

“Eddie can have the bed,” Richie says. “He’ll fit better.”

“Fuck you, old man,” Eddie says.

“You’re older than me.”

“My back begs to disagree.”

“Oh, well, if it _begs_.” Richie sways back and forth, his legs hanging off the end of Ben’s bed, which is very tall. “Nice house, man.”

“Thanks,” Ben says.

In what must be an effort to prove his back is fine, Richie brings in not only his own suitcase but also Eddie’s toiletry bag. Then he vanishes into Ben’s guest room and does not return.

“He drove all night,” Eddie says. “I told him to wake me up when he needed me to take over, but—” He shrugs. “Where did you stay the night?”

“Just outside of Chicago,” Ben replies.

Eddie looks at Bev.

Bev has the _I don’t want to talk about my husband_ look on her face. “Met up with a friend,” she says.

“Do either of you need anything?” Ben asks. “Here, come see the kitchen.”

He takes them to the kitchen, which has a set of glass double doors that lead out onto the massive back porch. As Ben goes around showing Bev where cups and dishes and silverware and water filters are, Eddie opens one of these doors and steps out onto the back porch.

He can see now that the house is built almost into a hill, and the low and flat look of the front vanishes almost entirely when staring out the back windows. A massive sprawl of grass slopes down from the house and runs into a stand of tall narrow trees. When Eddie was a kid, he would have loved to roll down a hill like this. He’d come home covered in grass stains and his mother would scream, but he remembers how that felt, to have the world spin on his axis, and have everything go blurry and dizzy in around his head.

When he turns back around, Ben and Bev are watching him look.

“You—uh, you built this whole thing?” Eddie steps back inside and awkwardly closes the door behind him.

“Yeah,” he says. “It had to be totally wheelchair accessible, Mom was not doing well toward the end there. But, like, she gave me a home for years, it was time to trade back.”

Bev asks gently, “You built this house for your mother?”

“Yeah.” Ben’s hand closes and his thumb rasps across the insides of his fingers like he wishes he had something in his hand to fidget with. He says, “Her name was Arlene, and Arlene was technically a made-up name for this opera called _The Bohemian Girl_, so.” He waves around at the house.

Bev smiles. “The art historians are going to think you had some kind of grand romance with a woman from the Czech Republic.”

“God, I hope not,” Ben says. He stretches his arms out in a T and then lets them fall. “I think I’m going to take a nap too. Do either of you need anything?”

“Coffee,” Eddie says.

Ben opens a cabinet and pulls down a folded paper bag with a name written on it in cursive, and then points him to the electric kettle and the French press. Bev is already taking down mugs. For all the elegance of his home, Ben apparently keeps a random selection of mugs, including one that Eddie recognizes has the logo from the Wahlburgers restaurant in Boston. There are a lot of tourist mugs in there, including one that looks like it has Japanese calligraphy on it.

Ben goes off to his room.

As she spoons coffee out of the bag, Bev says, “He takes these space naps—he says NASA found that the perfect length for a power nap is twenty-six minutes. It was wild in the car, he’d start nodding off and he’d set a timer on his phone and be back up and talking to me in half an hour.” She smiles. “How are you and Richie?”

“Me and Richie are—” Eddie’s stomach flips over. _You’re not sick_, he tells himself. _You’re just…_ “—me and Richie.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Bev says. “We never really got to talk when you got back from New York. Did that go okay?”

Eddie looks down at the stone countertop. He’s about to say _Yeah that was fine_ but instead what comes out is, “She said she burned the letter Stan sent me.” He blinks once slowly and then looks back up at Bev.

Bev’s face is sympathetic. “I know. If it went to our home addresses that Stan got from Mike, then Tom has mine from Stan too.” She shakes her head. “I hate to think he’ll have Stan’s wife’s address, I don’t know what he’ll do with it.”

“He can’t find you here?”

“Won’t have a clue,” Bev replies. “How about yours?”

Eddie shifts his shoulders a little, trying to get more comfortable in his own skin. “I took a lot of documents. I’ll have to make copies to mail back to her later, it’s not fair otherwise.”

“Eddie?”

He makes eye contact with her and raises his eyebrows, questioning.

“I know you weren’t—weren’t happy,” she says. “But did she ever…?”

Eddie has no idea what that means—_make you cry in the shower? wail on you when you suggested separate beds?—_until Bev reaches up to the collar of her blouse and folds one side of it down. There’s a round burn there at the top of her breast, and it’s clearly from a cigarette.

“No,” he says quickly. “No, never, god, Bev, I’m so sorry.”

Bev fixes her shirt. When she smooths it back into place she idly strokes directly over the scar. “Don’t worry about it. I just wondered, at the restaurant.”

He frowns. “At the restaurant?”

“About the fried food,” Bev says. “He had a lot of things to say about what I could eat and when, too.”

Eddie feels his eyes widen—he hadn’t realized that gave the game away, hadn’t even realized that was something to worry about, because of course eating right is important for health, just look at Ben, and the Kaspbrak women were always worried about his health, weren’t they? He averts his gaze.

Bev pours the coffee and goes into the fridge for creamer, but it’s gone off already. She throws it away with a shrug. Eddie doesn’t much like his coffee black, but he sips it for something to do.

“Richie told me about what happened, trying to keep you from leaving Maine,” she says.

“That—oh, yes,” Eddie says. He thinks of the afterimage of the road lines and shudders once; with more driving to go before they get to California, the threat seems very real and present.

“That’s terrifying,” Bev says. “Ours was—” She shakes her head. “—not exactly new, but it couldn’t kill us.”

Eddie frowns. “Why? What happened to you?”

They take their coffee mugs and Bev leads him back out to the truck. When she opens the door Eddie recoils at the smell—not oil and gasoline from an old car best put out of its misery, but rusting metal. He can see where they made a token attempt at wiping the blood off the black plastic of the tape deck—an honest to god tape deck, in this day and age, does Mike even still have cassette tapes?—but the blood on the floor is set thick into the cloth interior and the mats. Eddie can even see footprints in it, where Bev and Ben’s feet had no choice but to rest.

Eddie shudders hard. He remembers the blood from Bev’s bathroom, but it hadn’t dried by the time she brought them all in to help her clean it up. Much less scabbed in fabric. He’s torn by equal parts desire to clean it up and to slam the door shut and light the car on fire.

Then he turns and looks at Bev. She’s giving a thousand-yard stare to the tape deck.

“Do you think Ben has rubber gloves?” Eddie asks.

They end up taking towels straight out of the bathroom—a weirdly plush shade of light brown, instead of white, which makes Eddie feel better about what he’s about to do to them. He has a dash kit in the emergency roadside repair kit he keeps in the trunk of his car—not that he ever expects stereo emergencies, but that’s just where all his car tools end up so he knows where to look for them. Bev opens up the garage doors to air out the smell and Eddie has both car windows open, towels spread across the floor and the bench seat so he can kneel there without actually touching any of the blood. The cloth seats have absorbed some of it and dried crispy, but when he steps on the towels on the floor he can feel a wet squelch like mud.

He crawls up entirely onto the seat and tries not to touch the floor again.

He carefully levers away the nylon with the plastic prying tools. This car’s a hunk of junk but if Ben spent money on it, Eddie’s going to try not to damage the dash any further than it already is. There are some white scratches on the dark surface. He pries out the trim panel with the careful precision and then sets it on the towel beside him and undoes the retaining bolts.

Ben comes out after what must be half an hour and stands in the doorway watching them. Eddie looks up through the windshield and waves. Ben waves back and goes back inside.

Bev stands outside the truck, drinking her coffee she holds in her right hand and, in her left, holding Eddie’s coffee. Occasionally he leans out the car and she holds the mug to his mouth so he can take sips.

Eddie carefully disconnects the wires, drops his tools back into his bag, and then fits his hands to the stereo. He’s afraid that when he pulls there will be some kind of sucking sound, like tearing loose an organ or a tooth, but instead it lifts away smoothly and with no frightening noises.

He holds it up and asks Bev, “Do you want this?”

She shakes her head.

“Good.” Eddie flings the tape deck out the driver’s side door. It hits the poured concrete and breaks. Ben appears back in the doorway, but Eddie simply ducks his head down to peer into the gap where the stereo had rested.

There are no remaining liquids, no unsettling fluids, no suspicious stains. No sign of where any of the blood came from—if cars bled—no punctured sack hidden in the back of the dashboard. The truck gives no appearance of being alive.

Fuck this. Cars have rules. Eddie hates, hates, _hates_ that whatever this was broke them.

They walk back inside. Eddie has every intention of taking a hot shower and quickly, but Ben’s expression is grave.

“If you’re done,” he says, “would you go wake up Richie? Derry is gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to play the link games!
> 
> Use of Mitski's "Nobody" was inspired by [this piece of fanart](https://rededededdie.tumblr.com/post/187909151358/my-god-im-so-lonely-so-i-open-the-window-to-hear) by [rededededdie](https://rededededdie.tumblr.com/) (beautiful artist, clean and simple lines). Richie's stress music was, of course, [Stan's Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3wHUk6WENwfcfLEOwdCGdH?si=PZAykQpJROSQmtTOQRcU7g), made by Wyatt Oleff himself and available on Spotify.
> 
> I don't know anything about architecture, so I thought "Frank Lloyd Wright" and made Ben's house a mashup of [Kentuck Knob](https://kentuckknob.com/about/the-house/) from the front and [Laurent House](https://www.laurenthouse.com/gallery) inside and from the back. I was dubious until I saw Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin lauded as "the perfect prairie estate" and then I was like, "Oh no yeah, Ben could do that."
> 
> I was so mad that _Get Out_ came out in 2017 so I couldn't have Richie point to it as a sign of Jordan Peele's genius. Here are the Key & Peel sketches: [Turbulence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH6QJzmLYtw) and [Tragedy Strikes at Aerobics Competition](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK98jx7gw7w). I made up Ben's review, but Richie's review is pulled from a criticism of John Mulaney's show _Mulaney_. The Urban Dictionary definition was technically posted in 2018, but I'm cheating and putting it in there anyway.


	7. In Summary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Losers Club has another meeting. All members will be in attendance at the Bohemian Girl. Please RSVP promptly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, guys, now I have to explain everything. Please excuse the infodump, I try to make it relevant.
> 
> Content warnings: emetophobia (Richie) again, mentions of suicide (Stan). If I miss any please let me know.

Richie says, “What the fuck do you mean, ‘Derry is gone’?”

It’s a nonsensical sentence. _Richie_ is gone, gone from Derry, gone from the Barrens, gone from the sewers, gone from the criminal justice system of Maine. What right does Derry have to go anywhere? He needs to know where it is so he can stay the hell away from it.

Ben says, “I’ve been watching the news.” He pulled out a laptop at some point and now he’s hovering at a barstool, his body supported half by it and half by one leg under him, like he just can’t sit down. After a few moments of careful typing he hits a button and turns the screen around, and Bev, Eddie, and Richie all lean in.

It’s overhead video footage, probably taken by a helicopter. Water swirls and flows in on itself, creating whirlpools around what Richie recognizes as the Kitchener Ironworks. There’s a jumpcut, and then flooding up to the stage of the bandstand in Bassey Park. Another jumpcut, and then the Kenduskeag flowing right over the uncovered part of the kissing bridge.

Richie recoils, stunned.

“It shouldn’t have collected that fast,” Eddie murmurs. Then, as if he hears himself and didn’t mean to say that out loud, he lifts his head and looks at Ben. “It can’t have collected that fast, right? It’s barely been two days.”

“Two days of nonstop apocalyptic rain,” Ben says. “They started the evacuations yesterday. This footage—” He stops himself and shakes his head.

“Yeah, but Haystack,” Richie says, putting his elbows on the table. The Paul Bunyan statue, yanked from its moorings and now set afloat, gets dragged across the camera. “You said Derry was _gone_. This isn’t gone. This is—apparently another Biblical plague, but the town’s under all the water.”

“The Flood wasn’t a plague,” Eddie says.

“What?”

Eddie’s lips are white and faintly wobbly. “The blood, the darkness, those were plagues. The Flood is just—the Flood.”

“Thank you, Dr. Kaspbrak, very illuminating,” Richie says, and turns back to Ben. “I’m not gonna call a man out on his dramatics, but what’s the deal here?”

“Derry is coastal,” Ben says. “If you look at the weather map—” He turns the computer back around and starts fussing with it again. “—they’re tracking the flow of water. It’s all going toward the Atlantic. What do you think’s going to happen to the buildings, the whole city, when the water goes out? I know those houses. They weren’t meant to withstand this kind of event.”

“This kind of _event_,” Richie repeats. “This kind of _event_, holy shit, Haystack, what kind of unnatural disasters can this house stand up to?”

“This is Nebraska,” Ben says. “Everything’s flat. It’s pretty earthquake-proof, tornado-proof, and fireproof.” He turns the computer back around, having located the map he wanted. It’s a live newsmap showing the state of Maine as a whole, and the water levels buffeting the coast.

“We need to call them,” Bev says. She reaches out and picks up Ben’s phone casually and proprietarily, without second thought. Richie watches her tap the button and then hiss. “What is your passcode?”

Ben doesn’t look up, still frowning down at his computer. “Year I met you,” he replies.

Bev looks stunned. “New kid,” she says, voice suddenly soft.

“Yes, that’s very sweet of him, to forget all about the worst summer of our collective lives excluding this one,” Richie says. “1989, call Mike, call Bill.”

Bill doesn’t pick up. This is not surprising, because Bill is somewhere in England, and has a wife, and he might be on a second plane or something after his sleepover in the airport, and definitely nothing wrong happened to Bill, definitely.

Bev curses under her breath as she hangs up and calls Mike.

Mike Hanlon, ever the public librarian, is far more obliging. He comes on with a “Hello?”

“You’re on speaker,” Bev says. “It’s me, Ben, Eddie, and Richie. We couldn’t get Bill on the line.”

“You saw it?” Mike asks.

“We’re looking at it right now,” Ben says.

“As soon as my plane went up, we got over the clouds,” Mike says. “Almost no turbulence. I was in, and then I was out. When did the rain stop for you?”

“Soon as we crossed state lines,” Ben replies.

“Not the only thing that stopped,” Richie says, and tells Mike quickly about the darkness and the blood.

“Your glasses?” Mike asks, and then seems to stop and think. “Bev, what made the blood stop?”

Bev breathes heavily next to Richie, her lungs filling with a sound like a distant roar of thunder. “I lit a cigarette,” she replies.

Richie lifts his eyebrows but said nothing. It doesn't sound quite true.

“Anything else along that line?” Mike asks.

They all look up at each other.

Richie admits, “I think Stan’s haunting Eddie’s radio. And his musical tastes have not improved since 1989, man.”

“That’s not all,” Eddie says. Richie lets his gaze flick to him. Eddie is staring at him with those big brown eyes, his face completely black, the light from Ben’s ridiculous windows casting the groove in his cheek into brightness and then shadow.

“It is all,” Richie says. “That was one of the screaming nightmares I told you guys about, that was all.”

Mike asks, “No more head spinning around?”

“Not that Eddie or I noticed,” he says dryly.

The phone buzzes and a text message notification comes up. Moments later, Richie feels his own phone vibrate in his pocket. He gets it out and flips it open to see that it’s Bill.

_Sorry, was in therapy session, can’t talk now. Ok?_

Ben begins tapping on his computer. “I’m sending him the links.”

Mike says, “Ben, what have you been thinking about this?”

“Yeah, Haystack, take us into your mind palace.”

Ben raises his eyebrows and gives a slow blink. “Mind palace,” he repeats. His hands flex again; Bev reaches out and takes one, and he grimaces and runs his thumb over her knuckles. “Well, for starters, I didn’t see anything about any dead kids.”

“I noticed that too,” Mike says.

“And if we hurt It, instead of killing It, or if there’s another It out there—”

“Why the fuck would there be another It out there?” Richie interrupts.

Bev’s shoulders shrug. Her blouse is sleeveless despite the October weather, and Richie can see freckles against the white fabric. Between that and her lipstick, she looks all red and white in this house.

“I saw something,” Ben says. “Before my flashlight battery went out. I think we destroyed—at least most of them, but. There were eggs.”

Richie has time for his entire body to go tight in response to that little statement.

Then he says, “I’m going to—”

And Eddie is getting up too, saying, “Yep,” clearing space for him to bolt across the kitchen.

Richie makes it to the sink and stands there swaying for a moment, and then starts throwing up almost directly into the drain. He manages to push the faucet out of the way and plants one hand on the wall in front of him, bracing himself as he stares down into that pipe and imagines what might be lurking there.

There’s a hand on his back, right where he’s hunched to get level with the weirdly short counter. “Ben—washcloths or something?” Eddie says.

Richie chokes, coughs, and his mouth says, _“Don’t_—” He feels his eyes bulge with surprise rather than strain and he bites down hard, fitting all his teeth together until his jaw aches. Then he leans forward and gasps a deep breath.

“Don’t—be—afraid,” Stan says, every word wrenched out of Richie’s throat like it’s on fishing wire and someone’s dragging it up through his esophagus. Richie half expects them to land in the sink.

“Oh, very—” Richie’s voice cracks and he gulps. “—very fucking helpful, Stan, because that has worked so well for the rest of my life.”

“Stan?” Mike repeats from over by the sink—which, right, Richie has national witnesses to his upchucking this time. Why not get Bill on the line and go transatlantic? “Stanley, can you hear me?”

“Bill,” Stan says. Richie throws up again.

Eddie has apparently found washcloths or kitchen rags or used socks or something, because he’s reaching over Richie’s head and turning on the faucet. Richie stares down into the stainless steel basin and watches the water wipe away his vomit and everything go swirling down the drain with a metallic gurgle. Eddie turns the faucet off again, reaches to grab Richie’s right shoulder and haul all Richie’s weight into Eddie’s own side, and then slaps a wet rag to the back of Richie’s neck.

“Oh,” Richie manages in relief, all the sweaty and prickly discomfort under his hair gone. He takes a few breaths and Stan says, _“Bad—reception—need—”_ And Richie gets so dizzy he has to lean sideways and get his temple on the counter.

“Stan?” Mike says again. “Stan?”

“Stanley can’t come to the phone right now,” Richie wheezes. “Can I take a message?”

“Shit,” says Mike. “What did he say?”

“_Need Bill_,” says Beverly, her voice quiet in the wake of Richie’s heaving. “_Bad reception. Need Bill._” And it's not the word order Stan had used, but Richie knows without a doubt that Beverly is right.

There’s an electronic crackle from the phone and everyone tenses. But instead of that horrifying barely-human shriek Richie heard when he fucked with the radio that one time, only Mike’s voice comes out.

“Not me,” he says, “he didn’t ask for me—it works over the phone, guys, it works if we’re far apart. Whatever’s calling Stan back, it’s not Derry, it's us, it's all seven of us. We have to get Bill on the phone.”

Eddie’s hand is absently rubbing up and down Richie’s back. Richie is too wiped out to do anything but enjoy it and let the cold from Ben’s stone countertop seep into his face.

Bev says, “Bill?” It’s clear from her voice that she’s on the phone again.

Richie braces himself for another round of vomiting, but neither his gut nor Stan decide to react to that.

“Yes,” Bev says. “Yes, I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s important that we talk soon. It’s important that all seven of us talk soon. Ben sent you some news stories.” A pause. “Yes, we can do that, later, that’s fine.” Her tone changes when she addresses the speakerphone, less formal and more urgent: “Mike, can you get on Skype in like, five hours?”

“Y’all are severely overestimating my resources,” Mike says, but then he adds, “Yeah, I can probably do that. Reception’s shit where I am, anyway.” As Richie starts quietly giggling into the counter, Mike seems to realize what he said and quickly adds, “Sorry, Richie, didn’t mean.”

“All good, Mike my man,” Richie says, while raising his middle finger. Eddie makes an exasperated sigh. Richie, still leaning half his weight into him, feels Eddie’s abdomen rise and fall with the breath.

“Five hours,” Mike says. “Ben, I need you to think about—about the things you remember, and about the things It did. And I’ll think about—I’ll think about the magic, and about Stan.”

“What are we supposed to think about?” Richie asks.

Mike pauses for a moment, and then says, “You, Richie, should probably go on a bender.”

Ben takes them to dinner.

With another five hours to wait between Bill being able to talk, and Richie all-too happy to follow Mike’s advice, Eddie just passes Ben his keys.

“I’ll drive back,” he says. “You get us there.”

Ben looked at the car—admittedly, the only vehicle that seated more than two currently available—and smiled slightly. “Eddie’s Caddy,” he says.

Bev and Richie climb in the back—Richie repeatedly fielding concern with “I’m okay! I’m okay! Librarian’s orders, man!” and then putting his head in Bev’s lap instead of buckling up. Bev seems not to mind this, stretching her legs out alongside him and idly playing with his curls. Richie’s eyes close behind his glasses and he seems, if not asleep, then definitely relaxed and languid, like a cat.

Eddie ignores a sharp tug of what might be jealousy in his gut and buckles himself into the passenger seat. Sitting in the same position for maybe two days has his hips and thighs aching and his knees groaning in relief when he gets out of the car; he tries to ignore it as he watches Ben guide the car away from the Bohemian Girl and out west onto I-80 again.

Ben steers them through two towns and into a third, each getting progressively smaller and smaller. The last, a place whose lampposts name it Hemingford Home, looks composed of only about eight buildings. Ben drives straight past them and through the main drag, to where your standard roadhouse restaurant waits. A sign declares it to be the Red Wheel.

Eddie is waiting for Richie to make some kind of comment about the southwest thing Ben seems to have adopted as a way of life, but it becomes clear that Richie has indeed fallen asleep on Beverly. Bev herself is leaned with her shoulders back against the window, her hair a nimbus around her head, face turned so she can look behind her out through the glass.

“This is your place, huh?” she asks.

Ben smiles as he parks the Escalade. “This is my place,” he agrees.

Richie folds up and slides out of the backseat when they stop, looking a little dazed but no worse for wear than he has been over the course of the road trip. He leans on Eddie for a second for no apparent reason other than because he can, and then he follows Ben into the roadhouse.

“You got the real Country Boy thing going on, Haystack,” he says. He holds the door open for Bev and then for Eddie. Eddie, who has to duck under his arm, shoots him a look, but he pays it no mind. “Didn’t you go to school in California?”

“Don’t try to change me, Trashmouth,” Ben replies calmly.

The interior is a long bar and a scattering of tables. It is dead as dead can be inside. There’s a bartender there, polishing the wooden surface, and when he sees Ben come in he straightens up and beams.

“Mr. Hanscom!” he says, and then comes out from behind the bar to hug Ben. Ben takes it, stopping in place and accepting the hug, patting him on the back in return. The bartender says, “Christ! Didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”

“Sorry to scare you, Ricky Lee,” Ben says. He takes a step back. “A table tonight, I think?” He indicates Bev with a wave of his hand.

The bartender—Eddie can’t tell if Ricky Lee is a full name or just two first names—surveys them all, looking wide-eyed and glittery at Bev, and then at Richie, and finally at Eddie. His face breaks into a smile. “Yes, sir, right this way. You get caught up in Colorado?”

“Oh, not Colorado,” Ben says. “I’ve lost that contract by now, I’ll bet. Got into some legal trouble in Maine, had to help a friend out. Ricky Lee, this is Ms. Beverly Marsh, and this is Eddie Kaspbrak. You might know Richie Tozier here, he’s America’s worst comedian.”

Richie laughs with what looks like astonishment. “Oh-ho! Haystack gets off a good one. Beat Eds here right to it.”

The bartender turns to look at Bev with the same astonishment Eddie expects out of someone meeting a celebrity. “A girl named Beverly,” he says, with the air of someone quoting something.

Bev smiles. “For a certain value of girl, anyway.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Ricky Lee sets them up at a table near the bar. Ben pulls out Bev’s chair, and Eddie is sitting when Richie throws himself down, all extraneous elbows. Ricky Lee places silverware wrapped in napkins at each of their place settings, and then sets laminated menus down in front of them. Eddie picks his up and it makes a great plasticky wobble in his hands.

“You drinking the usual tonight, or are you celebrating, Mr. Hanscom?” Ricky Lee asks.

Ben shakes his head and looks at Bev, who tilts her menu down toward the table.

“I’ll have a screwdriver, please,” she says. “Whatever vodka you have.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says; he smiles and when he turns to look at Eddie it’s with a slight flush on his face. “And for you, sir?”

“Just water,” Eddie says. “I’m driving us back.”

“You in town for a while?” Ricky Lee’s smile is encouraging.

It’s nice to see that Ben, who gave such a great impression of loneliness when he showed up and doesn’t talk much more than he did when they were kids, has people who missed him. Eddie looks to Ben, who looks perfectly comfortable in this space, though pleased to be sharing it.

“Ms. Marsh here, for an indefinite time,” Ben answers.

“Three days, with option to renew,” Richie quips.

Ben ignores him. “And that one’s getting on the road as soon as he decides to go back to Los Angeles where he belongs.”

Richie grins wider.

Ricky Lee looks at Eddie with all the genuine friendliness the clerk at the Portsmouth rest area channeled into a customer service face.

“We’re only supposed to be here overnight,” Eddie says, glancing back at Ben. “I don’t know. Maybe that’ll change.”

Ricky Lee smiles, accepting this, and turns to Ben.

“That’ll be a Wild Turkey for me, Ricky Lee.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Hanscom.” Ricky Lee turns to look at Richie.

Richie’s smile has dimmed somewhat. “Beer,” he says shortly, in the same way he asked the waitress _Can we get the check?_

Ricky Lee launches into a list of their beers. Richie, apparently baffled, turns to look at Ben.

“Give him my usual,” Ben says.

“Very good, very good. And are you dining in today, or just celebrating?”

“We’re—” Ben’s face smooths out as something seems to occur to him. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten here before. But that one—” He points across the table at Richie. “—needs some food in his stomach, and I’m gonna let him eat on my dime tonight.”

Eddie says, “You don’t have to—”

Ben shakes his head, smiling slightly. Richie wasn’t kidding; he’s really got the country hospitality going on. Eddie hasn’t seen him be this vocal with anyone, let alone a waiter.

“Sounds good, Mr. Hanscom,” Ricky Lee says. He smiles at Bev, and then at Eddie. “I’ll just give you a moment with the menus?”

“That’d be great.”

As Ricky Lee is walking back to the bar, he turns around and asks, “Mr. Hanscom? A shot of Turkey, or…?”

“Yeah, just a shot,” Ben says.

While Ricky Lee mixes Bev’s screwdriver, Richie leans into the table.

“How much drinking do you do, man?” he asks.

Ben shrugs. “I’m here like once a week.”

“Because you’ve seduced the waiter.”

Bev grins suddenly and Eddie leans over and slaps Richie’s arm. “Don’t,” he says. “He’s just doing his job.”

Richie holds up his hands. “I call it like I see it, man. _Mr. Hanscom_.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “I gave him my last silver dollars. Man probably thought I was going away to die.”

Eddie lifts his eyebrows, thinking, _Weren’t you?_

Ricky Lee brings back their drinks. They order. Bev keeps looking around at the jukebox, the neon lights, the sawdust on the floor. Richie, who was puking again less than an hour ago, takes his first sip of beer and makes a pained face, but says nothing. Ben says nothing either but switches to water after his shot of whiskey, and nods every time Ricky Lee comes back to get another beer for Richie.

Bev sips her screwdriver and pops her shrimp into her mouth one after another, pulling them free of their tails with her teeth. Eddie keeps an eye on Richie, but if he’s still feeling sick the only sign of it is that he pushes all his fries toward Eddie when he’s done with his sandwich. Eddie, who is very aware of what will happen when they go back to Ben’s and get Bill and Mike on the line, eats them almost without tasting them.

As Eddie’s sucking the salt off his fingertips, Richie idly traces around the rim of the glass holding his third beer. He stares straight through Eddie, and then picks up his glass and drains it. When he sets it down on the table, he says, “Some kinda life you got here, Haystack.”

“Yeah?” Ben went all out and got steak. He’s hooking crispy onions on the tines of his fork now.

“Yeah,” Richie says. His voice is a little lower now, his words a little slower. Eddie watches his eyes scan across the bar. “Wondering how our clubhouse woulda looked if you had the resources back in the day, man, with the neon lights and the peanut shells.”

“’Stead of the hammock?” Ben asks.

Richie nods slowly and looks back into his empty glass. “Instead of the hammock,” he agrees.

Ben looks at Eddie, a crispy onion dangling from his fork. “Or that paddleball I paid three dollars for and you broke on Stan’s face?”

Eddie frowns in guilt, sticking his jaw out. “I’ll give you the three dollars,” he says. “I didn’t know what caffeine did to me then.”

Bev is smiling. “You sure you like coffee? It took you some forty-five minutes to finish earlier.”

Richie opens his mouth, visibly latching onto the word _finish_, and Eddie holds his hand out in front of Richie’s face to physically block him from conversation.

“I was doing manual labor,” he says. “You can’t hold that against me.” He looks at Ben. “We gotta get you some creamer, though—don’t you even dare, Richie.”

“Oh, whatever you say, Eds,” Richie says.

Bev, whose lipstick is still precise on her mouth but now marks her straw in a red ring, grins. “Got a sweet tooth.”

“Don’t you _dare_, Richie.”

Richie shrugs. “What’s the point if you’re not even gonna let me make the joke? Because you're _sweet_, Eddie Spaghetti."

Ricky Lee comes back to ask if anyone wants dessert. Ben looks to Bev, and Bev bites down on her lower lip, white tooth on red paint. She raises her eyebrows at Eddie. “You wanna help me out, here, Eddie?”

“What am I, the drunk uncle at this wedding?” Richie asks.

“Yes,” Ben replies.

Bev and Eddie split the seasonal special, grilled peaches and cream—or _’n cream_, as the menu indicates. Ricky Lee brings out four spoons, and Ben takes a bite and nods, then sets his down. Richie eschews his own spoon in favor of chasing Eddie’s every time Eddie tries to draw it back across the table.

“What’s that gonna taste like with your beer?” Eddie demands, incredulous.

“I don’t know, now, do I?” Richie replies.

Eddie rolls his eyes and jabs his spoon into Richie’s face, catching the corner of his mouth. Richie doesn’t seem to mind, accepting the sacrifice and licking a thread of caramel away.

Eddie sets his spoon down on the table. “Well now I gotta use another spoon, thanks, Richie.”

Richie gestures at Eddie with his beer. “You literally chose to do that.”

Bev hasn’t drunk nearly as much as Richie has, but there’s color in her face now, thanks to her naturally pale skin. She smiles in a secretive way and then turns her head to look at Ben. Ben, visibly lovestruck, gives a small smile back.

Ricky Lee thanks them all for coming and shakes their hands as they walk out the door. He holds Bev’s in both of his. “It was wonderful to have you. You’re welcome here any time.” He shakes Eddie’s hand next, almost frantic in his enthusiasm. “Nice to meet Mr. Hanscom’s family at last.”

Richie slings his right arm over Eddie’s shoulders and holds his left hand out for Ricky Lee to shake, which throws Ricky Lee for a moment but he catches himself quickly. Ben pats him on the back with his shake as they leave.

“I expect I’ll see you on Friday, Ricky Lee.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Hanscom. I’ll have your seat ready.”

They all truck back out to Eddie’s car. As Richie throws himself across Bev’s lap again in the back, he says, “Remember the Chinese restaurant?”

“Yes, Richie,” Bev says.

Eddie buckles his seatbelt and waits for Ben to do the same; he’s given up on those two back there.

“Remember how we ate so much and drank so much and it was just great?” Richie says. “And then we found out about Stan?”

The mood in the car dies.

Richie doesn’t seem to notice, starting to giggle in a _definitely drunk_ kind of way. “We’re doing the same thing,” he says. “We’re doing the exact same thing.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause as that sinks in.

“Better not be exactly the same,” Ben says. “You beat any of my tables and I’m throwing you out, Trashmouth, just try me.”

“How many tables does one man need?”

Eddie drives them back to the Bohemian Girl.

Once they’re there Ben reveals that the guest bedroom also doubles as a study. There’s a small yellow bed in there, comforter rumpled in a shape Eddie immediately recognizes as _Richie_ but still technically made, and a large computer monitor on the desk. As Ben pulls up Skype and starts texting Mike and Bill, Eddie looks at the bulletin board on the wall. There are small sketches there, each done in blue pencil, of different architectural ideas Ben must have. One looks like a top-down view of a building, and another like a set of blocks left abandoned on some stairs, and another just a drawing of a room with a mantle in it. All have meticulously clean lines and Eddie bets they’re to scale for whatever he’s working on. The drafting table is pushed into the corner in lieu of a closet.

Eddie thinks that he understands where Ben slept, when his mother was in her decline.

“Why do you put up with him?” he finds himself asking.

Ben, who is typing at the computer, raises his eyebrows and looks over his shoulder at Eddie. His fingers don’t stop moving and he hits the return key to log in.

“Richie,” Eddie says. “I know he annoys you. But it’s like, no matter what he does, you aren’t fazed.”

Ben shrugs, head tilting to the side. “He ain’t hurting anyone.” He turns back around and checks the monitor. “We have a little time. I’m going to put on pajamas, if we’re gonna try to do magic in my house I’m gonna be comfortable for it.” He gets up with an effort that belies his appearance, as if he’s lifting all the weight he ever carried as a child. Casually he asks, “Why? Why do you put up with him?”

Eddie shrugs and averts his gaze again, looking at the concept board. “I don’t know. I like to fight.”

Ben laughs. “Yeah, we all knew that, Eddie.” He pats Eddie on the shoulder and leaves the room.

Richie appears with a bottle of bourbon.

Eddie rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and tilts his head back. “Why? You got sick already today?”

“Mike says I need to relax,” Richie says. He’s not slurring, but his speech is coming from a lower place in his mouth than it usually does; it gives him an uncharacteristically thoughtful air. He walks into the room and throws himself down on the yellow bed in a way that suggests he’ll never be able to get up again. “Funny, the idea of doing this doesn’t make me feel particularly relaxed.”

“You have the muscle relaxants,” Eddie points out, and then he slams his palm into his forehead when he realizes he’s just suggested mixing those with alcohol.

Richie’s smile is slow, Cheshire-catlike. “Mike did say I should go on a bender.”

“Don’t even think about it, I hope Ben throws you out.”

“It was your idea.”

Bev comes in with glasses, which she sets down on Ben’s desk, and a bottle of vodka and a bottle of gin in her arms. These she holds up towards Eddie. “You partaking?” she asks.

Eddie considers it and then holds his hand out for a glass.

The party effect is somewhat dampened when Ben returns, stack of mail in one hand and a large red bowl hanging from the other.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says, “and that’s why this is my cheapy salad serving dish.”

“You sure know how to treat a guy,” Richie says. He sets the bowl on his lap, looks at the other thing Ben’s carrying, and sighs.

After a few moments the Skype call begins ringing with that bubbly electronic music. Ben accepts the call and Bill appears on the screen. There’s a slight delay between the video coming on and Bill’s intense frown relaxing into a smile. Eddie can see bookcases behind him, but everything’s pixelated.

“Hey, guys,” Bill says.

“Hi, Bill,” they all chorus, like Bill’s their preschool teacher. Eddie raises his gin in a toast.

“Are we waiting on Mike?”

“He should come in shortly,” says Ben. “He says he’s having trouble getting the wifi to cooperate.”

They wait for a few minutes. Richie takes a shot of vodka, which Bev refills when he drains and just keeps ready.

After a few moments the bubbly music happens again. Ben clicks a few buttons and Mike, looking much clearer than Bill does with the overseas connection, appears on screen. He’s at a funny angle to his camera, and the lighting shines green on his forehead.

“Okay, I signed up for a free trial of xfinity, so wish me luck,” Mike says. “This better work.”

“Cable companies wait for no—séance,” Richie attempts.

Everyone ignores that.

“So what’ve you got, Mike?” Ben asks.

Mike shakes his head. “I’ve been thinking about the things we remember, and the way that works. Bill, you got the thing I asked for?”

“Got it,” Bill says, and gets up. After a moment the camera turns, and Bill is standing in front of a large bulletin board much like Ben’s. This one is studded with index cards. Eddie can’t read them, but he can see black handwriting on them.

“So the way I see it, we’ve got three moving parts,” Mike says. “We have the Turtle, we have It, and we have Stanley.”

Everyone looks at Richie, whose eyes flick about as if running some kind of internal check, and then he shrugs.

With Stanley taking his time, or apparently not invoked properly, Mike shrugs. “We have to think about who did what, and when. And the things that happened are—the ways It chased us around that summer—”

“And this summer,” Richie adds.

“—yes, thank you, Richie, we were there,” Mike says. “And the skyrocketing amount of success all you had for leaving Derry. And the way you all forgot each other, until I called. And the Ritual of Chüd. And the deadlights. And then Richie channeling Stan. Then the rain.”

No one speaks.

After a moment in the silence, Mike asks, “You got all that, Big Bill?”

“Yep.” Bill starts tapping his index cards. “Makes more sense than mapping out a novel, I’ll tell you that.”

“The eggs,” Ben says quietly. “Don’t forget about the eggs.”

Eddie shudders.

“But the eggs happened almost at the end,” Mike says, dragging them all back into Bill’s clean thought map instead of in the maze under the sewers. “Bill, what happened first?”

Bill, looking less like a college professor now, is blinking slowly in the same way Richie is. Eddie can see the bright blue of his eyes vanish and then reappear. “God,” he says, “that was a long time ago. I found the book in the library.”

“Yes,” Mike says. Ben nods.

“And I learned about the Ritual of Chüd. And then we went in to fight It, and I saw…” He trails off.

Eddie sips his gin nervously. Bev says she saw all their deaths, and Richie won’t even speak of what he saw.

“I missed the deadlights, the first time,” Bill says. “Bev, you were in, but I missed. And I saw the Turtle—I went past the Turtle. And he said…” He grins suddenly. “He said, ‘Cosmological shit like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual.’”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Ben asks dryly.

“No,” Eddie says, startling himself. Ben, Bev, and Richie all turn to look at him, and he lifts his glass up a little higher, as though he can ward them off. “No.” He looks at Bev. “You understand—you told me. You said that the spear—” He moves his glass, miming throwing it. “—you said that it kills monsters, if you believe it does.”

There’s a slight delay and then Bill says, “Yes. Yes, that’s why I was weaker this time, I wasn’t a kid, I didn’t believe.”

Eddie shudders again and brings his glass to his mouth. When Bill engaged, when his eyes went vacant and white, It had begun laughing. Even the memory is almost too much; It laughing, and Bev screaming, and Richie shouting and suddenly his eyes going white too. Eddie watched his body go slack and start to lift, and the blood coming out of his nose, and he didn’t know how to enter telepathic warfare with an alien clown, but he had a spear, and he knew how to throw.

“What did you see, Bill?” Bev whispers. And then louder, because the Skype connection isn’t that good: “What did you see?”

“Audra,” Bill says. “My wife. Just…” He shakes his head. “Comatose. And me trying to push her up the hill on Silver, like… like Sisyphus, rolling the stone. That’s what it wanted me to see.”

Richie clears his throat and says, “Yes, and then I very handsomely and heroically saved you, good job me.”

“It said that the Turtle died,” Bill says. “That it choked on a galaxy.”

“Huh,” says Mike.

“Richie,” Bev says, the same horrified urgency in her voice as before.

“No.”

“Rich, it could be important,” Mike says.

Richie takes a second shot and repeats, “No.” Then he smiles. “And if you keep pushing me, I’m gonna lie to you. It suffers you, that’s what the deadlights do—they suffer you, they make you see death and the people you love dying and what you have to do after, and that’s mine, all right? That’s what It did, but what I saw was mine.”

“That’s some bullshit, Richie,” Eddie says. He’s thinking about blurting out the bit about the leper in the rest area, and how sick it made him after just to say it.

Richie looks away from the camera and at him, his expression almost surprised. “Is it? Is it some bullshit?” Eddie realizes abruptly how drunk he is. Richie reaches for the vodka but Bev holds it away, just taking his shot glass out of his hand.

“Lay down,” she tells him. “Just lay down.” She sits on the bed with him and eases his head down into her lap again, stroking his hair.

Richie sets his jaw but goes, heavy-limbed and moody.

“But It didn’t lie. When it said the Turtle was dead,” Bill says. “You remember, you can’t lie in that space, it happened.”

“I remember,” Richie says, and shuts up again.

Mike says, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Bill says, since Richie is being noncompliant. “If you were there, you’d know. Even—it’s like trying to lie to yourself. You can try to convince yourself that things work one way, but the pieces are still there.”

Eddie drinks. His palms are sweating. He thought he heard Richie calling out for him, but Richie’s mouth was gaping open like a corpse, and Eddie was just hearing what he wanted to hear—wanting to be the hero for once, and there was nothing to do but throw the spear. And then Eddie was on top of Richie and Richie was blinking back into awareness, dark eyes so reassuring after the white, and he just looked at Eddie. No smirk or mask or stupid joke on his tongue, just those eyes.

Eddie pours himself more gin.

“But you and Richie fought,” Mike says. “And then Eddie apparently revealed his past life as an Olympic marksman—”

Eddie’d like to blame his blush on the alcohol, but he’s pretty sure that all his blood just lives in his face now. It moved when he moved from New York, so how’s he supposed to blame it?

“—and It retreated,” Mike says.

“And dropped the eggs,” Ben says. His voice is low and dreadful; he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, though he isn’t drinking anything. “I thought I got them all, I thought… My light was running out. I couldn’t see.”

“It’s okay,” Bev says. She reaches across from the bed and takes his hand. “It’s okay.”

“It is okay,” Mike agrees. “You did the best you could, man. And you and Richie chased it down.”

“Yeah, Richie ripped its leg off like he was at Red Lobster,” Bill says.

“And then what?”

Bill puts his hands up in front of his chest and mimes pressing them together, turning his wrists in a way that makes Eddie think of his mother squeezing lemons, rolling them against the counter. “Crushed Its heart,” he says.

In the wake of that unsettling image, everyone’s quiet.

“It has to be dead,” Bill says at last.

“But the eggs—Stan said he was defending us from It again, It has to be alive or else why is this happening?” Ben says.

“Richie, what did you hear about the Turtle?”

Richie’s eyes go glassy and sweep from side to side, then focus again. “I dreamed it. Said something funny about… about…” He scrunches up his face and then says, confused, “Continuity error? But I don’t know if that actually was the turtle or if it was just my brain, or if it was Stan, like, sending me a satellite call. And then it told me to wake up.”

“Why?”

Eddie feels his cheeks and jaw burn. Richie’s expression doesn’t change.

“Just did,” he says. “It said, ‘You’d better wake up.’” His voice cracks down into a bass when he says it, not in an awkward pubescent way, but in a way that’s definitely quoting the dream. “I thought it was Darth Vader talking to me, or Mufasa. And then Stan said—” He blinks hard. “Stan said, ‘The Turtle couldn’t help us.’”

Everyone waits to see if that’s going to be enough to send Richie retching into Ben’s salad bowl, but nothing happens.

“Right,” Mike says. “So what I’ve been thinking is—what part of the Ritual of Chüd was the Turtle?”

Eddie blinks.

“What?” Ben asks.

“You know—the Turtle_ couldn’t_ help us. But we were definitely helped. And the ritual still worked. It may have told Bill to toss aside the rulebook, but what you described definitely sounds more like a witness than any genuine interference. And if the Turtle’s dead…” Mike trails off, leaving them to think about it.

Eddie sips again. He’s right, is the thing. Eddie never went up into the deadlights or saw a cosmic turtle, or heard any voices other than Richie saying what he wanted to hear, that moment when he was very scared. But the Ritual of Chüd worked. Eddie was able to hurt It—him! Eddie Kaspbrak!—and if that isn’t magic, what is?

“And there’s no way It would help us to defeat It, so the magic had to come from somewhere else. So I’ve been thinking,” Mike says, “and I think it’s just from us.”

Everyone goes quiet.

This is very hard to dispute, when they’re waiting for Richie to start speaking in tongues, and when throwing on a pair of glasses he doesn’t need suddenly cleared Eddie’s vision, and if Bev smoking a cigarette actually stopped her car bleeding. And then there’s the matter of Eddie going back to that place in his mind he’d forgotten about, that self he’d packed away for twenty-seven years—the one that looked at his mother coldly in the hospital bed and was able to tell her what was going to happen, that his friends were going to come visit him, and that she wasn’t going to get in the way. Eddie tapped into that, when he went back to take his things from Myra. Eddie _believed_ in that moment, remembering Stan’s bird book. He’d forgotten about the bird book. How had he forgotten about the bird book?

_This kills monsters_, Bev said, _if you believe it does_.

And among the things Eddie believes is that his car is safe, and that machines have rules, and that glasses help you to see.

“Huh,” he says.

“Are you saying that the magic was in us the whole time?” Richie asks, drawl condescending and slurring his _s_’s a little bit.

“Well,” Mike says. “If the Turtle’s gone. And it’s not from It. What else could it be?”

“Stan,” Richie says promptly.

“We’ll get to that,” Mike says. “But the magic worked the first time when Stan was standing up with us—Bowers tried to kill him, do you remember that? Bowers tried to kill him and he failed, and then Stan had all those teethmarks in his face from It, from the painting, but he walked out when we saved him." Eddie thinks that _saved him_ is maybe a strong word for what they did there; he remembers how Stan just lost it in the sewer, crying and keening_ You took me to Neibolt._ "The magic was there before Stan.”

And it’s still with them, after Stan.

Except not after.

Eddie pipes up, “He said the thing about my letter.” Everyone turns to look at him again. His hands are definitely shaking but at least there’s no ice in his glass to go clinking against the side and betray how scared he is. “He said the thing about my letter, that it wasn’t really burned, but I hadn’t told Richie about that.”

“Your—what?” Richie asks, eyes wide and confused, but Eddie shakes his head. He can’t invoke Myra here in this room; that’s not who they’re waiting for.

“Yes,” Mike says. “Yes, and he talked about the blood, not the car, but the blood oath. But what’s the other big difference between now and last time? The Turtle is gone, and what else?”

Bill says, “We remember each other.”

Everyone looks at each other, brushing each other with their eyes the way they clinked glasses in the Chinese restaurant when Bev declared a toast.

“That’s it,” Mike says. “That’s exactly it—you guys are all together, but Bill and I are out here on our own islands, and we still remember you, it’s not a matter of seeing each other and remembering. So the Turtle is gone, and the memory loss is gone, and I think—I _think_,” he says, slowly, “—that the Turtle took our memories last time.”

Eddie blinks. “Why? Isn’t the Turtle supposed to be good?”

It’s pretty simple arithmetic: anything that opposes It is good, whether or not Eddie has personally run across this great supernatural force before.

“Yes,” Mike says. “But imagine you had to walk around in the world like this. Going off to college, knowing that something like It was out there. You started panicking the moment I called you and reminded you—and let me tell you, holding the memories in my head all these years hasn’t been easy, there are more than a couple people who would say I’m crazy, and no one talks about what they’ve seen. How do you think you could have coped, knowing?”

There is a collective deep breath from the group. Even on the Skype call, Eddie sees Bill’s chest rise dramatically and then fall.

“So if the magic was in us the whole time—” Mike pauses and makes a face, like he knows how that sounds. “—and we just woke it up by coming back and remembering, it’s in us now. And what was everyone’s biggest fear when they went back to Derry?”

“That a murderclown was gonna bite my dick off,” Richie slurs.

Eddie feels his chest convulse in something like laughter, but he swallows it down. It doesn’t do to encourage Richie, and it’s not even funny, he’s just feeling uncomfortable and Richie’s breaking the mood. But the tension is too serious to break. They need it.

“That we would die there,” Eddie says.

“No,” Ben says. “That we would never walk out.”

“Exactly!” Mike says. “Exactly! So when you all left, what happened?”

“It tried to keep us,” Eddie says. “Because we believed that Derry would try to keep us, and we’d never be able to leave. Are you saying I did that to myself?”

“Eddie, you’re a great driver,” Mike says, “but that thing sounds fucking terrifying. You think that it would have been the same if I were driving out in my truck? I’ll tell you, if I’d been driving, my truck would have caught fire and I’d have burned to death in it, that’s what would have happened to me.”

And Eddie believes cars are safe, once they’re understood.

“Stan!” Richie says. Everyone freezes, wondering if this is like a herald announcing his arrival, but Richie only gestures wildly with his hand. “What about Stan? What about _Stan_?”

“Stan m-made us cut our palms,” Bill says. “Stan made us swear—_he_ initiated the Blood Oath, guys, it was his Blood Oath, and the scars came back when we remembered. Ben, I think it’s time.”

“Time for fucking what?” Richie demands, and then Ben is leaning forward on in his desk chair and pulling an envelope out of the stack of paper. He leans back and hands it to Richie, who half-sits up and accepts it.

Eddie recognizes it immediately. The sticker in the corner is the same. This one’s addressed to _Ben Hanscom_, in what must be Stan’s lettering.

Richie tears open the envelope clumsy, with great frills of paper coming up under his nails. Bev reaches as though to help him, but Richie sits up all the way and out of her reach. He scoots across the bed with his folded knees and leans with his back on the wall, then takes the letter out and holds it up to the light.

“You guys better have my salad bowl ready, if you want me to read this,” he says, but he looks around the letter to the rest of the group, looking for approval.

“Do it,” Bill says.

Richie puts his fist up in front of his mouth to clear his throat theatrically, and then he begins to read. It’s definitely Richie doing a voice at first—he’s still slurring and he trips up once or twice, having to go back and read a sentence over from the beginning to put the emphasis on the right word, but slowly his speech smooths out, his voice takes on a rounder quality and he stops having trouble with the consonants, and it becomes a Voice.

_Dear Losers,_

_I know what this must seem like, but this is not a suicide note. You’re probably wondering why I did what I did. It’s because I knew I was too scared to go back. And if we weren’t together, if all of us alive weren’t united, I knew we’d all die. So I made the only logical move. I took myself off the board. Did it work? Well, if you’re reading this, you know the answer._

_I lived my whole life afraid. Afraid of what would come next, afraid of what I might leave behind. Don’t. Be who you want to be. Be proud. And if you find someone worth holding onto, never ever let them go. Follow your own path, wherever that takes you._

_Think of this letter as a promise, a promise I’m asking you to make. To me. To each other. An Oath. See, the thing about being a Loser is, you don’t have anything to lose. So be true. Be brave. Stand. Believe. And don’t ever forget. We’re Losers, and we always will be._

Richie lowers the letter, his mouth still slightly open, and Stan says, “Well, if you’ll forgive the dramatics, I was a little scared for my life at the time, but I meant it.”

Bev lunges for him and folds him into a hug. “Stan!”

Richie reaches out and puts his arm over her shoulder. Stan says, “I’m going to be honest with you, this is much better. Trashmouth, you ought to be hammered like all of the time. Reception’s still a little weak—Eddie, come here, just adjust the antennas.”

Eddie stares at Richie. “What does that even mean?”

“It means,” Richie says in his normal voice, and then Stan’s incredibly sober voice overtakes it. “It means there’s a lot of darkness around here, and it _shines_, but it shines brighter around you. Come over here.”

Gingerly Eddie sits on the bed, and one of Richie’s legs stretches out so his knee presses to Eddie’s thigh. Richie shakes his head hard and then leans back against the wall, head tilting onto Beverly’s. He’s holding his shoulders differently, a little more rigidly.

“This is actually pretty nice,” Stan says. Richie’s eyes close and he tilts his chin up further. “God, it’s been so long since I’ve been drunk.”

_“Stan,”_ Mike says.

Eddie looks at the monitor and sees that Mike is crying.

“Oh, Mike, it’s not your fault,” Stan says. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do, and I shouldn’t have done it, but it was never your fault. You only told the truth.”

Mike sniffs heavily and covers his face with his hands.

“Stan,” says Bill.

Richie’s eyes open and he looks at the monitor for a long moment.

“I thought about you,” Stan says. “In the moment. You kept me from going totally insane, I think, just long enough for me to fall asleep. It—I didn’t hurt, Bill.” Richie takes a deep breath, lungs expanding and then relaxing with a sigh. “Having a body again is weird, though. I was so scared of everything else, and I thought I knew the way the world worked, but when I threw that away I kind of threw out cause and effect and control in a lot of the ways I wanted. I don’t think I’m going to stick around forever, it’s pretty uncomfortable.”

“Are you—are you haunting us?” Eddie asks incredulously, thinking of the radio.

“Haunting you?” Stan asks. It’s a weird look on Richie’s face, the one he turns on Eddie; Richie never looks that hawkish. “No I’m not—_oh_, you mean when Trashmouth kept fucking around with the radio!”

“Yes,” Eddie says. “The ten-hour playlist, Stan.”

Richie’s face is very serious for a moment, and then it breaks and he smiles. “He wanted to talk,” Stan says innocently. His face does something odd and Richie says, “Oho, Stan the Man gets—_no, no, no_, we can’t keep doing this,” Stan interrupts.

Eddie has seen a lot of strange things in his life, but this makes him uncomfortable in ways he had not anticipated. Richie’s always been weird (this is not news to you) and he’s always acted weird (again, this is not news to you), but Eddie still looks at two people fighting for control of the same body and thinks_ that person needs help. That person is sick and needs help._

“Anyway, I came back with the power to shut up Trashmouth, so the winner takes it all, Tozier.” Richie’s face smiles Stan’s smile. “And if he was going to keep torturing himself with the radio, I had to stop him somehow. I am sorry about the tape deck, Bev, I tried to stop it and I couldn’t get in, you don’t pick up as well.”

Bev covers her mouth and says, “I saw you! I saw you in the mirror!”

Stan grits Richie’s teeth. “Yeah, I think that did more harm than good. Listen. I don’t know how often I’ll get to do this, let alone do it without killing Richie in the process. I meant it. Everything I said. You have to be true, and you have to be honest, and you can’t lie, because if you can’t believe in each other, the magic will go away.” Richie’s eyes search their faces. “You have to be honest, because you have to keep your magic. You know that things like It are out there now, and once you believe in them, they—” He shakes his head. “God, Richie, you’re so fucking stupid.”

Eddie giggles a little nervously. “Because we believe in It. We’ll be able to see the bad things, now.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Richie’s eyes bore into Eddie’s. “Tell the truth,” he says. “It’s going to hurt. But you have to do it.” Slowly he looks around the circle, from Bev to Ben to Mike to Bill onscreen.

Ben says, “Stan. Stan, is It dead? Did we kill It?”

“Yes,” Stan says.

“But Derry—”

“Derry collapsed when you knew you weren’t coming back,” Stan says. “You pulled the columns down. I can’t tell you that you got all the eggs, Ben, but if there are any left, they’re in the bottom of the ocean, and it’s going to take a long time for them to dig their way out, and Derry won’t be there for it when it does.”

Ben, in that moment, looks as round-cheeked and disheartened as he did when he was a child.

“You did good,” Stan says. “We stopped It for twenty-seven years, once. You bought us a lot more time than that. Maybe all of time. I don’t have that kind of time. I love you.”

“We love you too,” Bev says.

“I love you, Stan,” Eddie says.

Stan turns Richie’s chin to look at him and smiles just the slightest bit, just the left side of his mouth creeping up. “I love you too,” he says. “Be true.” He looks around. “I love you! Even you, Richie,” he says fiercely, and then Richie slumps into the wall and Bev.

They all stare at him, wondering what exactly to expect.

Richie takes off his glasses and rubs at his temples. “My fucking head, Stan, you asshole. Bev, darling, I’m cut off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pacing? I don't know her.
> 
> Okay! Okay, please feel free to talk to me in the comments about what you understood and what made sense and what didn't and any remaining questions you have. I think it'll be a while before I revise this work, since I'm basically writing it straight out and posting immediately, but the feedback is pretty important. If I'm gonna save something for the Benverly sequel I won't spoil it, but I'll tell you up front.


	8. In Cheek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie talks. Eddie runs from his problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, writing this was like pulling teeth, I had a big freakout in the middle of the day worrying that I'd lost my momentum. Guess who lied about how long this thing is going to be again?
> 
> I'm actually gonna say check the end note for the full content warning if there's something you're specifically avoiding, but without details: Depression. Brief suicidal ideation. Drunkenness and consent issues. Internalized homophobia.

Richie doesn’t puke.

But he does get limp and shaky for the rest of the meeting. He’s sure that they continue to talk around him, in the wake of Stan’s declarations, but he can’t quite focus on it. At some point Bev says, “Richie, are you okay?” and Richie manages to shake his head, and then Eddie and Bev are grabbing him by the feet and shoulders and laying him out on the bed. Ben’s picking up his phone, and then the lights go out, and someone closes the door.

He lays there in the dark, not feeling _bad_ per se, but just exhausted and achy and foggy-headed. _Still drunk_, he reminds himself. Ben left the salad bowl next to the bed, apparently just in case.

He knows it was well-meant, that they want to let him get some rest, but he’d much rather they just go on talking around him. Like Bev’s hotel room, how they all slept in a heap when they got back from the quarry, the hospital, and the police station. Here on Ben’s narrow sunshine-yellow bed in the dark, Richie feels…

Lonely. Like he’s some fucking kid again, like he hasn’t been _alone_ so much for his whole adulthood, even when he was surrounded by people. It’s just frustrating, to be upset by it at this point. Seeing the Losers, the Lucky Seven, over again, is like someone cracked him open and pulled out Trashmouth Tozier, and now Richie’s just getting his _feelings_ hurt all over again.

“Stan?” he mumbles.

Stan does not speak to him.

Richie adjusts the arm he has folded under his head and pummels the pillow into a more comfortable position. He lays on his side in case he throws up—he has a vague memory of watching _The Karate Kid_ and thinking _lucky Mr. Miyagi didn’t choke on his barf, that’d put an end to Daniel-san’s career real fast._

Richie’s career is over.

He sings to himself, sardonic and wobbly and completely out of tune, “_I’ve been big and small and big and small and big and small again and still nobody wants me, still nobody wants me.”_ Then he laughs.

The self-pity is allowed, as long as he laughs at himself when he’s done.

At some point—he might fall asleep a little bit, he’s not sure—he remembers that he hasn’t brushed his teeth, and Eddie spent all that money on like, forty different teeth cleaning implements at every state they stopped in. It seems like a good idea to get up and brush his teeth. He gets up, opens the door, and more or less staggers into Ben’s bathroom.

The lights are almost all out in the main room and Ben’s door is closed. Eddie is a loose shape on the couch that Richie can’t truly see without his glasses. Where did his glasses go? Someone took them off his face for safekeeping. Maybe it’s not the best idea for Richie to be wandering around without his protective salad bowl.

He uses the toilet, washes his hands, and splashes water on his face. He brushes his teeth and uses the mouthwash, though it takes him three or four tries because he keeps forgetting how long he’s been brushing or swishing and he kind of has to start over. Then he peers at himself in the mirror, getting very close so that he can see himself.

He looks like hell, and he can’t even blame that on Stan. It’s just him. His hairline is creeping up his forehead and no amount of floppy hair is going to hide that for long—look at Bill—and he’s too old to be getting hammered on—is this a weekday? He has a suspicion it might be a weekday.

He has the brain of a teenager again. Staying at home from school. Christmas break and summer vacation, stretching out so long that he no longer knows what day of the week it is, and other people tell him where he has to be.

He sighs, wipes his face one more time, and turns out the light. Then he creeps back to Ben’s guest room.

There’s a shape sitting on his bed in the dark.

Richie’s heart seizes, he yells, _“Motherfucker!”_ and he grabs something promisingly long and shiny off Ben’s drafting table to defend himself with.

“Shit!” says Eddie. “It’s me! It’s me! Shh.”

Richie takes that moment to have himself a nice little heart attack, hand to his chest and doubling over as the adrenaline wars with the alcohol to decide which is going to back down first. Like he slammed Red Bull and NyQuil at once.

Ben calls, "Are you okay or are you getting murdered?"

"We're fine, Ben!" Eddie calls back.

That seems to be all Ben's input on the matter.

After a moment Richie sets down what turns out to be a metal ruler. “Fucking _Christ_, Eddie.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he says.

Richie doesn’t entirely know what to do with his whole corporeal being, so he slumps back over to the bed and throws himself on it from the end, erring toward the wall so as not to completely bowl Eddie over.

“Whaddaya want, Eds?”

It can’t be to climb in bed with Richie. Eddie literally told him that he was terrified of sex, and the second Richie got pushed past where he thought he’d be able to defend, he invaded Eddie’s space and held himself over him in the dark. And Eddie was _shaking_, he was so scared.

Richie thought he crossed a line or two in the car, trying to call Eddie’s bluff at the airport and then bitching about drinking at the rest area. But that was beyond the pale. That was the werewolf, the claws popping out and the letterman jacket with TOZIER on the back, that was Richie out of control of himself and proving that, given even a little bit of trust, he’ll take it and crush it.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks, like Richie deserves worrying about.

Richie breathes in and then he breathes out. Some of the tension in his chest unknots. It doesn’t matter what Richie deserves, that’s Eddie; he’s gonna ask anyway.

“Fine,” Richie says. “Not gonna hurl on you, anyway.”

The mattress shifts as Eddie shifts, and then Richie feels fingers in his hair. Richie closes his eyes. Part of him worries that he’s going to fall asleep like this, and the other part thinks that would actually be a pretty cool thing.

“Just you in there?” Eddie asks.

“Mm-hmm. Stanley’s screening my calls,” Richie says.

Eddie keeps stroking his hair. “You okay to talk?”

“’S what I always do,” he replies.

Eddie seems to think about this for several seconds. His nails—Eddie always had such clean neat nails, not like Richie’s—scratch idly across Richie’s scalp, but it’s comforting instead of distracting.

“I told you everything,” Eddie says, his voice a sudden whisper in the dark, “and you don’t have to trade or anything like that, but please, I have to know. If you tell me I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Richie, but I have to know about the deadlights.”

And Richie feels a lot less sleepy and comfortable. The faint pulse that Stanley left in his skull reminds him that it's still there.

“I can’t,” he says back, his voice no louder. “Please don’t make me. Literally anything else you want to know in the whole world, Eds, but not that.”

“I have to know,” Eddie whispers back. “It scared you, it has power over you, and you heard what Stan said, if you believe in it, it makes it real. If you give it power, it makes it real.” His voice picks up in speed, in urgency. “I have to know, Richie, I thought I heard you screaming for me when you were in the deadlights, I heard you screaming my name, and I threw the spear, because you were scared. Please. You’re scared now. Please.”

Richie takes a deep breath, rolls over slightly, and turns his head so that Eddie’s hand is resting over his face instead of in his hair. His eyes are leaking slightly—not quite tears, but the way that when you lay down sometimes your eyes decide to release the ballast tanks.

“You’re real smart, Eddie,” he says. “You know what I said. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

“Please,” Eddie says.

And Richie can say _no fucking way_ to Eddie any day of the week, but meaning it is so much harder.

He takes a deep breath. “You died, Eds."

Eddie says nothing.

"I saw it. I felt it. You were so happy, you thought you had just killed It, and you had saved me, and it—” He shakes his hands and his whole body with it, trying to get across the way Eddie’s body had jerked when he split without having to say it. “It stabbed you. Clean through. With that fucking leg tentacle thing, Jesus Christ.”

His voice breaks. He takes another breath, trying to steady himself.

“It was like that time it pretend to be you, pretended to be that severed head in the mattress, and all this blood came out of your mouth, you just looked so sad, you knew it had killed you, and you weren’t laughing like you did with Bowers, you were just sad, and you had been so happy.”

Another breath. His lungs are a bellows.

“And we had to leave you in there. We couldn’t carry you out. Ben and Mike had to stop me from running back into Neibolt while it was collapsing, I thought—I thought if anything, I at least could take your body back, but they wouldn’t let me, and then the house came down, and then we went to the quarry and there was your blood in my glasses, Eds.”

Eddie’s thumb strokes across the top of his cheek, under his eye. Tears run sideways down Richie’s face and into his hair.

“It didn’t happen,” Eddie says.

“It did,” Richie says. “I felt it. I believed it, Eds, so it happened.”

“It didn’t happen. You stopped it. You saved me, again, you’re always doing that, it didn’t happen, it wasn’t real—” His voice is growing more insistent and when he breaks off he says, _“Richie.”_

He pulls his hand away and grabs hold of Richie’s shoulders, manhandling him up, and Richie lets him because of how dizzy and pliant he feels. Eddie’s arms fold around his shoulders and hold him there, chest to chest, Eddie’s sharp chin digging into a tendon like usual.

“I’m real,” Eddie says. “I’m real. Do you believe in me?”

“Yes,” Richie says. “But I’m a very stupid and gullible person. I’ll believe in anything, it turns out, and a Turtle tried to protect me from it, but I’m a hazard to myself and others.” He chuckles into Eddie’s shoulder. He’s still wearing his jacket, and the zipper teeth are pressing into Richie’s collarbone. “And if I believe in this, I’m going to wake up on the floor there in the bad end again, Eds.”

“It’s not the bad end, it’s a bad dream,” Eddie says. “I’m real. I feel real; I know things you don’t, like, more than usual, it’s not your imagination.”

Richie hugs back, his elbows squeezing Eddie’s ribs and his hands meeting around Eddie’s back, he’s so lean. Eddie smells like soap and wool and metal but not blood. And if it’s not real? Well, Richie will take this. He’ll take what he can get, and if in the morning he wakes up in the Derry Townhouse by himself, he’ll probably end up taking a bath.

“We’re going to be okay,” Eddie says. “We’re going to Los Angeles."

Richie laughs again, sharp and painful.

Eddie sits up, releasing him and pulling his chin out of something probably important in Richie’s musculoskeletal system. Richie lets him go, leaning back and sitting up and wiping at his face with the back of his hand.

“God,” Richie says. “I just wanted to end one night without my fluids all over my own face.”

“You’re fucking disgusting,” Eddie says predictably. He looks around in the dark—his night vision has to be better than Richie’s—and then he’s stuffing a tissue into Richie’s hand.

“Haystack keeps tissues by the bed in his guest room. Good to know,” Richie attempts.

“Can you not,” Eddie says, sounding so tired and exasperated. “Can you just not, for once in your life, Richie, god, just sit with the tension like the rest of us, you complete asshole—”

And then Eddie’s hands are sliding under Richie’s jaw and tilting his head back and they’re kissing. Richie doesn’t even have a second to agonize over _is this it?_ because Eddie’s not waiting for him to ask questions, he’s pressing his mouth so hard to Richie’s that Richie’s lips are kind of smashed into his teeth. Richie opens his mouth not because he knows what the hell is going on but because he can’t breathe through his nose right now, and this is Eddie Kaspbrak, and there’s a tissue in his hand and Eddie is actually hurting him a little bit.

Richie gets enough space between their lips to say _“Fuck”_ and then kisses him back. He doesn’t know where his legs went, he’s just trying to get up on his knees for enough leverage to give Eddie as good as he’s getting, and maybe get him to calm down a little bit because Richie’s lip might be bleeding right now. “Hey hey hey,” he whispers, because he knows Eddie would hate that, “shh shh shh shh shh.” He puts his thumb under Eddie’s long jaw, shifts his weight forward, and sucks on Eddie’s bottom lip.

Eddie _moans_ and snaps his head away, panting.

Richie is wide awake. Apparently Eddie found a shortcut to his whole nervous system. Richie’s pretty sure this is what being Tazed feels like. He gets his fingers up in the hair at the back of Eddie’s head where it’s shorn short and silky and strokes. “You okay?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie snaps back, and pushes him into the wall.

Richie feels his eyes pop. “What?” he gasps, and then Eddie’s mouth is on his again. Richie’s skull is kind of pinned between Eddie and the wall, and so he tips his head back desperately to try and get air. “What did I even do?” If he doesn’t know, how is he going to replicate it?

Eddie has a knot of Richie’s hair somewhere back behind his ear, and when he pulls, Richie’s spine curls and shakes. “Can’t even see,” Eddie mutters, and maybe that would make sense if Richie’s head weren’t swimming. Richie tilts his chin in the dark, trying to find Eddie’s mouth again. Eddie tastes like gin and toothpaste, which is weird but not entirely unexpected, and Richie tries getting Eddie’s lower lip between his again and Eddie’s nails scratch down the back of Richie’s neck.

Richie hisses and Eddie slips to the side, shoulder colliding with Richie’s chest as he just… _collapses_.

_“How are you doing that?”_ Eddie demands, which is probably the best review Richie’s ever gotten in his entire life despite the utterly furious tone it’s delivered in. Eddie grabs him by the shoulder and pushes hard. Richie, already completely dazed, falls onto the bed and bounces slightly.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Richie says quickly, getting his hands up. Eddie gets his hand around one of Richie’s wrists and shoves it down into the duvet. “Holy _fuck_, Kaspbrak,” Richie gasps. “Just calm down for like _a second_, I have drunk like _a lot_ tonight and I don’t know what you’re looking for here—”

One second Eddie is half on top of him and the next, like he’s_ magnetically repelled_, he’s all the way at the foot of the bed with his hands up over his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie gasps, sounding horrified. “I didn’t mean to—you don’t have to—”

Despite the alcohol flooding his brain, Richie is a white male comedian living in 2016, and Eddie’s fears click into understanding pretty quickly.

“_Ho_ boy, no, check literally _all your consent boxes_, Eds, but my blood is like eighty percent alcohol and my dick is totally offline right now,” Richie says. “Which, like, not to get in the way of a good _mauling_, but I don’t know what exactly you had in your head—”

And shit, Eddie’s been drinking tonight too, adding more gin to the problem every time he was scared like that was his new inhaler, and would he even be doing this if he were in his right mind?

“You—” Eddie says, frozen, his face white and his lips swollen.

And then he completely dissolves into laughter.

“Thanks,” Richie says, “I’ll remind you I had a very important role to play today as a ventriloquist’s dummy shy of a _hand _up my ass, but go ahead, Richie Tozier can’t get it up. Can you do _‘hysterical. Hilarious’_ for me, maybe that’ll help.” He’s not kidding, actually, he loves the faces Eddie pulls when he’s mocking him, and one time it totally turned him on in a Chinese restaurant.

“You spend your whole life talking about your dick,” Eddie guffaws. It’s a straight up guffaw. Eddie is having a better time than any attendee of one of Richie’s shows _ever_. He leans over with a hand on the wall like he can’t hold himself up anymore.

Richie flounders around with one hand on the bed, finds the tissue, and blows his nose loudly. Then he balls it up and throws it in a corner. Eddie doesn’t even seem to give a shit, too busy breaking down over there. Richie lets himself flop back on the bed.

“Anyway, if it’s crying gross comedians you’re into, come back up here and let me show you how to kiss without biting someone’s lip off,” Richie says, and ain't that just the ballsiest thing he’s ever said in his life.

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, but he’s crawling back over and after a moment his weight sinks down over Richie from chest to thighs.

Yeah, if Richie’s cock isn’t gonna show up for that, it’s not showing up for anything. _Dick_, Richie thinks nonsensically. “I just told you, not tonight. Come here.” He guides Eddie’s head down to his.

Eddie might be desperate but he can’t take it, and Richie tries to gentle him down with a hand on his hip and one in his hair, kissing him slowly and thoroughly. Eddie remains impatient as ever, except when he’s overwhelmed, and then he keeps breaking away and letting his head thunk down on Richie’s shoulder like even holding his head up is too much.

“What the actual fuck?” Eddie asks, apparently both pleased and confused.

Richie responds indifferently, “Uh-huh,” and finds the corner of Eddie’s jaw and sucks just behind it, at his throat. Eddie makes a choked noise and his back arches from his shoulders to his hips, and Eddie fuckin’ Kaspbrak is getting hard on him over making out like teenagers. This is it. This is how Richie dies. He had a good run. Forget the killer clown, this was all worth it. He finds the hem of Eddie’s shirt above his belt loops and runs his hand up his spine, and feels Eddie contract against that too, like petting a cat the wrong way.

Then Richie blinks.

“What the fuck?” he says himself. He lets go of Eddie’s hair and sits up slightly, getting his other hand along Eddie’s side and running from his hip to his ribs. Eddie squirms in a _that tickles_ way instead of an _oh yes_ way and his knee just about stabs Richie in the kidney.

_“What the fuck, Richie,”_ he snarls.

Richie is too baffled by his discovery. “Are you—” He pushes Eddie up slightly, enough that he has access to his chest under his shirt. “Are you fucking ripped?” he demands, completely stunned by both the lack of fat and the smoothness of his skin. He drops his hands to Eddie’s waist and makes to sweep his shirt up to his armpits, but Eddie flinches back. There’s a bright pale flash of his navel in the dark. He doesn’t look like Ben does, doesn’t have an eight pack or anything, but if Richie looked like that he’d probably be more successful. “_Eddie Kaspbrak, are you fucking ripped_, you’re a risk assessor, what the fuck are you doing, we’re _forty_—you’re _forty-one_—”

“Staaahp,” Eddie complains, so suddenly and aggressively New York that Richie bursts out laughing. He lets Eddie go and covers his eyes with one hand. “What is your _problem_?” Eddie demands, exasperated. He’s still sitting on Richie’s pelvis.

“I can’t believe you’ve been letting me wander around with my shirt off, and you look like_ that_,” Richie says, and can’t get it together, just giggling like an idiot.

“Well _why are you half naked all the time,_ are you_ trying to kill me_?” Eddie demands. He gets smart and runs his hands up Richie’s sides to his armpits, and Richie’s skin is still_ just_ hypersensitive enough for that to be sexy, and Richie’s legs and feet come up off the end of the bed.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, truce,” Richie says.

Eddie glowers at him but settles back down, elbows on either side of Richie’s chest, and puts his ear over Richie’s heart. He’s heavy. Richie will happily let him suffocate him if it means he doesn’t get up. Eddie glowers in the dark and then turns his face away so Richie can only see the crown of his head. Richie touches his hair, fitting the strands between his fingers.

“Do you use mint shampoo?” Richie asks. “Do you just use toothpaste for every hygiene need?”

Eddie huffs once through his nose. “It’s tea tree. It keeps away lice.”

“Do you have lice?”

“I don’t, I use tea tree shampoo.”

Oh god, this is it for him, Richie can’t go back after this.

“Don’t sleep on the couch,” he says.

Eddie makes a vaguely cooperative noise.

Richie swallows. “I mean, don’t sleep on my couch. When we get to L.A. Sleep in my bed. With me.”

“Okay,” Eddie says without arguing. He looks and sounds tired.

He’s also lying on Richie’s vital organs and forgoing the blanket.

“Is that even comfortable?”

“Yeah.” A thumb pokes into Richie’s gut, prodding experimentally. “You’re soft.”

“Fucking _thanks_,” Richie says.

Eddie laughs so quietly Richie can only tell from the way his body shakes.

“Okay, but my feet are cold, so like, blanket, come on.”

Eddie grouses through the process of getting high enough off Richie that Richie can arch his back up and pull the comforter out from under him (with a warning twinge in Richie’s lower back that he’s choosing to ignore for now), and then settles back on top of Richie.

“You wanna take your jacket off?” Richie asks.

“No.”

“Okay.” He drapes the blanket over Eddie’s shoulder. If the man wants to sweat to death in the bed, that’s his business, and at least the jacket’s absorbent so Richie will be spared.

Richie thinks he’s fallen asleep until Eddie mutters, “Tell me your bed’s bigger than a twin.”

“Well, if you wanna talk _bigger_,” Richie says, unable to help himself, and Eddie kicks him in the ankle.

Eddie wakes up feeling… surprisingly not terrible.

Overheated and dehydrated, and when he moves his head he realizes he’s drooled onto Richie’s shirt in his sleep, which is _mortifying_, but definitely better than the morning after any actual sex he’s ever had. A shower and breakfast can probably wait. The urge to get up is stifled under how comfortable he is, even though Richie’s objectively pretty lanky and his knee is stabbing Eddie in the thigh.

This is clearly a trap.

He tenses immediately, tries to scrabble off of Richie, vastly overestimates the quantity of bed available to him, and falls off the bed. He drags the blanket with him.

Richie’s eyes slit open, black as his hair and squinting.

Eddie stares at him.

Richie blinks once. “Y’good?” he asks.

He becomes aware that his eyes are so wide and dry that his vision is blurred. He blinks back and nods mutely. His heart is speeding along and he needs to drink some water before he passes out.

“’Kay,” Richie says. His eyes close. He puts his hand to his forehead and rolls over with a groan that suggests he’s dragging the weight of the world with him.

Eddie kind of forgets how to use the muscles in his eyes and stares uselessly at Richie’s shoulders.

After several long moments Richie says, sounding a little more awake and more annoyed, “Dude, if you gotta leave it’s fine, just leave the blanket.”

He snaps out of it, untangles himself from the yellow duvet, and throws it back over Richie. Richie gives a huge sigh. Eddie finds himself stuck with his hands in midair, trying to decide whether he needs to drag the blanket down over Richie’s feet or something, and then he gives up entirely, backs out of the room, and closes the door gingerly behind him.

Ben’s house seems incredibly large and airy outside of the small room. All the furniture is placed so low that there’s just uninterrupted lines of sight, like a hotel, and Eddie can suddenly breathe again.

He’s not sick. He’s dehydrated.

He goes over to Ben’s kitchen, gets a glass, and agonizes for a few moments about whether the water is safe to drink or not. On a hope of hopes he opens the fridge and finds a Brita filter, from which he gratefully pours himself a cold drink.

Okay. _One thing at a time, Eddie, _he tells himself.

First of all, he’s hungover.

_Yeah_.

And he’s in Ben’s house, and he’s wearing last night’s clothes, and he slept in Ben’s guest bed with _Richie_ last night—

_That’s not all you did with Richie._

_Fuck_.

It’s also not just one thing, and what did he just say?

Ben comes out of his room, interrupting Eddie’s panic spiral. He’s wearing a t-shirt and athletic shorts. Eddie freezes, caught in this state of visible dishevelment, and holds on to his water like it’s a life raft.

“Hey,” Ben says. “I’m gonna go for a run. Do you want to come with me?”

Eddie thinks about it and realizes that running away from the crushing feeling in his chest sounds pretty good, actually.

“I don’t have any shorts,” he manages.

Ben shrugs. “I can loan you some.”

Which is how Eddie ends up in Ben’s workout clothes, speeding down the route Ben has worn through the woods over time, trying to think about absolutely nothing except the way his ears burn in the morning cold and the rawness in the back of his throat from breathing hard.

“You’re gonna wear yourself out!” Ben calls after him.

Eddie waves a hand, unable to speak.

“Okay,” Ben says.

The circuit goes in a big loop, and Eddie does burn out about a quarter of the way through. He has a good chance to stand there, half bent over and staring at his own pale shins, trying to catch his breath. He’s also surrounded by a lot of mast and dirt, and he keeps an eye out for bugs.

Ben jogs up. He’s not even breathing hard. He stops. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Eddie gasps.

“Okay, but put your arms over your head like this.” Ben demonstrates. Eddie gets a really good view of his armpits. “Open up your chest, get the air in your lungs.”

Eddie does, and it helps.

“Is that better?”

Eddie nods and drops his head, sighing.

“I know, man,” Ben says. Eddie’s wrecking his morning routine but he doesn’t seem to care. “It’s—wild.” He shakes his head.

Several moments of blank incomprehension later, Eddie remembers that Mike theorizes they all have magic powers. Like, to change reality around them. That Eddie is capable of turning out the sun, when he’s anxious, and not just for him, but for Richie too.

_Richie_.

_Bigger problems, Kaspbrak,_ he berates himself.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Eddie says quickly. He’s pretty sure he can feel his Eustachian tubes right now.

“Me neither.” Ben puts his hands together over his head and stretches his back, then drops his arms. “You wanna walk?”

“Probably smart,” Eddie admits.

They walk for several yards before Ben says, slowly and carefully, “The rest of you make sense.”

“Hm?” Eddie has never felt less sensible.

“Like, the voices, that was always Richie, and I think—” Ben frowns, brows furrowing. “Well, Bev makes sense, too, she was always…” He shakes his head.

Eddie nods encouragingly, trying to pretend he understands what that means.

“It makes sense, as much as any of this ever made sense.” Ben gives him an ironic look. “That they’d be… be _magical_, in some way, god, I’m forty-one years old, I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud.”

Eddie gives a sharp laugh. “Tell me about it.”

“And Bill, if any one of us was going to have _magical powers_, it was going to be Bill, you just looked at Bill and he was always right. No matter what he did, it was the right thing to do.”

Eddie has a brief and blinding memory of his mother dragging him into a car as he cradled his broken arm to his chest, and Bill and Richie spitting venom at each other in the rearview.

“Yeah,” Eddie says vaguely, and then he shakes his head and says, “No, you’re right, I mean, no matter what happened, no matter—” He gestures with his left hand, trying to convey _my arm_ and _the painting on Stan_ and anything else bad that happened to them that summer. “—no matter what happened, it was never Bill’s fault, it was something that we had to do and there were risks to the—not the job, but kind of the job, you know? Like, there was always a purpose for it.”

Talking to Ben is both comforting and aggravating at the same time, because he always listens, but because his silences make Eddie aware of just how much word vomit he blurts out by nature.

“You’re right,” Ben says. “He was… convincing. First day I met him, he told me what to do and I did it.”

Eddie blinks, trying to remember, and then blinks again and looks around at him. Ben had stayed with him while Eddie had what he thought was an asthma attack, and his inhaler was empty, and Bill had _left_ him. Granted, he biked off to go get a refill from Keene’s, but Eddie was too in-the-moment to have any perspective on that, he just remembers trying to breathe and being unable to, and that he was left with this kid who looked like Henry Bowers had half-killed him.

“You were hurt, like,_ really_ bad,” Eddie says.

Ben’s right arm fits a little closer to his side, like he might have to sweep it over to cover his abs.

“That was the first time you met Bill?”

“First time I met any of you, except Bev,” Ben replies.

“And you were—you looked like you were dying, and Bill Denbrough said _Stay here_ and you just did? You didn’t know him?”

Ben smiles and huffs a laugh. “Nope.”

Eddie wants to say _What the fuck, Ben?_ but he gets it. When Bill came back with the refill on his inhaler, Eddie looked up at him and saw _the sun_. “He’s convincing,” Eddie says. “That’s his thing. He convinces.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Yeah.”

They keep walking. Eddie keeps glancing at the ground for where he’s going to put his feet, because it would be just like him to end up with a twisted ankle while trying to have a real heart-to-heart, and if any of this soil touches anything other than the bottoms of his shoes, he’s going to just—

_Just what? Take a shower? Come on, man._

He shakes his head.

“It’s like Richie said,” Ben says, which makes Eddie have a reeling moment of wondering whether Ben can hear the voice in Eddie’s head that speaks in Richie’s intonations. “Not about—the magic, or anything, but about the deadlights. He said, they _suffer_ people. Not—” He gives a dismissive, elegant little wave of his hand. “Not in the sense that they endure people, but in that they cause suffering. The deadlights suffer, and Bill convinces, and Richie talks, and Bev—_sees_, she sees, is what she does, with that dead eye of hers. Do you remember the day we played target practice, before we brought out the slugs?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Yeah.”

Ben looks at him and says, “I don’t know how to describe what you do.”

Eddie feels himself smile. “I believe,” he says, and then looks away, trying to make it casual. He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s a, uh, a blessing and a curse. Me and WebMD.”

“I think they all are,” Ben says.

They’re maybe halfway around the track; Eddie can feel the Bohemian Girl back the way they came and he can see that the path—barring any surprises—is starting to turn back in its direction.

“I don’t know what I do,” Ben says after a moment. “Not like the rest of you.”

Eddie frowns. “What?”

“I don’t know. I’m not—” He shifts his shoulders uncomfortably and then shakes his head. “Nothing, sorry, it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Eddie says. “I mean, not any stupider than this whole thing, objectively this entire _state of reality_ is stupid, that’s why a fucking_ planetary turtle_ tried to take it away from us, so we didn’t have to think about—” He waves his hands.

Ben shakes his head again and quickens his stride a little, still at a pace even Eddie can keep up with easily, but definitely trying to get away from what he just said. “Sorry, sorry. I haven’t had any—any like, big moments, and I should be grateful for that, because the thing with the car…”

“Stop,” Eddie says, coming to a halt.

Ben tilts his head back like maybe he doesn’t want to, but he stops walking and turns to face Eddie. His hands are folded behind his back, like maybe he’s at parade rest, or maybe like Eddie’s gonna just punch him and Ben’s gonna give him one for free.

The path that Ben carved out with his feet over however-many-years of living here surrounds them on either side.

“You make a place,” Eddie says, because it’s obvious, isn’t it? “You made this house.”

Ben shakes his head. “That’s not a supernatural thing, I—” His mouth works. “—went to school for that.”

“Not the clubhouse. You didn’t go to school for the clubhouse.”

Ben turns his head and looks toward the trees on the far side, away from the Bohemian Girl.

“There was no way it should have still been standing after thirty years,” Eddie says. “That’s magic.”

Slowly Ben’s chest rises and falls. “It tried to crush me in the clubhouse,” he says after a moment.

Eddie takes that and listens, and tries not to imagine it. He’s never doubted the engineering of anything Ben made, not after that first afternoon in the Barrens when they managed to flood the grass and bring down that Irish cop on them. Maybe he worried a little bit about cave-ins, but taking a look at the load-bearing pillars Ben, a kid of thirteen, had set up in there was as soothing as the laws of physics could be.

He also remembers Ben stomping around, trying to find the hollowness of their hide-out under the sod after all those years, and falling straight through the trapdoor.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” he repeats.

Bev is up, when they get back to the house. She’s stirring her coffee with a spoon and looking heavy-lidded and serene without makeup on. Eddie can imagine her in candlelight, how she’d just shine. She looks up when they come in, accepts Ben’s kiss on her cheek, and tells Eddie, “There’s coffee in the pot.”

Eddie is reminded that there is still no creamer.

“I was going to go to the grocery store after this,” Ben says apologetically. “Eddie and I got to talking.”

“Yeah?” The silver spoon goes around and around in the mug. “Did anyone check on Richie to make sure he didn’t choke on his vomit and die in the night?”

“He didn’t get sick,” Eddie says, and then feels his neck flush hot. “I mean, not that I heard, anyway.” And he definitely would have noticed, considering Eddie was on top of him at the time and comparatively soberer.

“Well that’s refreshing,” Bev says, corner of her mouth quirking up to take the bite out of it.

Eddie has ibuprofen in his toiletry bag, in among the many thousand pills he might need on any trip, and he excuses himself to take those to Richie with a glass of water.

Richie sleeps on a bed the way Godzilla strolls through Tokyo, it turns out, and he’s completely twisted around the blankets with his pillow on his chest. One calf is hanging out of the sheets. When Eddie sets the glass and pill bottle down on the nightstand, quietly as he can, his eyes open anyway. He blinks once, blearily, and then closes his eyes and offers Eddie a smile.

Eddie cannot handle that, cannot handle Richie sleep-rumpled in a bed any more now than he could in the motel in Massachusetts where there was the added stressor of _a hell of a lot of skin_. He creeps back out, his heart pounding.

“Still alive,” he tells Bev. He’s still wearing Ben’s workout clothes. “I should take a shower. Uh, Ben, I used your towels yesterday to remove the evil tape deck?”

“Yeah, there’re more,” Ben says. He’s leaning over the countertop with a notepad. “I need to shower too, I’ll get them.”

Ben’s guest bathroom has a plastic liner and a burgundy shower curtain. Eddie turns the water up as hot as he can stand and resolves to be as quick as he can, but as soon as he’s under the spray he just kind of dissolves. The water pressure is good, too, of course it is, and drums on his back until all the tension he’s carrying in his shoulders loosens.

Eddie cleans up and dresses in real clothes and brushes his teeth and flosses and uses mouthwash and then stares at the array of pills and supplements still in his toiletry bag. TUMS, Benadryl, aspirin, Imodium, Pepto-Bismol, DayQuil, Dramamine, melatonin, lubricating eye drops, Chapstick, Carmex, Burt’s Bees, Tylenol (not to be confused with the Advil he left on Richie’s nightstand), hand cream, Vitamin C, fish oil, Excedrin, Chiggerex, band-aids in sizes extra large to extra small, Neosporin, scar cream.

Eddie has never even had chapped lips.

He stares at the Tylenol, trying to decide if he really needs Tylenol _and_ Advil. Acetaminophen goes out through the liver, can cause liver damage if you take too much, and ibuprofen goes out through the kidneys, which is why he left it with Richie. Eddie himself has never had much of a preference for one or the other.

He slowly picks up the bottle of Tylenol and drops it in the tiny garbage can beside the sink. The bottle plummets straight down, heavy—is it still full? Did Eddie ever even use one of them?—and then the red label vanishes under the puff from the small plastic bag lining the can.

Then he zips everything else into his bag and puts it away.

By the time Eddie comes out of the bathroom Richie is up. Not functioning, but up. He’s beside Bev on the bench seat, his elbows on the table, holding his head in his hands and staring straight down into a mug of coffee. Eddie does the walking equivalent of a stutter, second-guessing himself in the middle of walking to where his suitcase rests in Ben’s living room.

Only Bev looks over. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” Eddie says. _Come on, Eddie._ He swallows. “Did you take the ibuprofen?”

“Mm-hmm,” Richie says without looking up.

“Did you drink the water?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Eddie thinks vaguely of the bottle of anti-anxiety meds from the bathroom sink in the Townhouse, and then of how long it takes the human liver to metabolize alcohol, and then of Bev’s presence. He doesn’t know quite what to do, so he sits down at one of the barstools.

There is, surprisingly, silence, which is all the indication necessary to know that Richie is Not Well.

Eddie exchanges a glance with Bev, who seems pretty at ease instead of concerned, and then says, “You know if you’re hungover you should really be trying to replace the water in your body instead of drinking coffee.”

Temples pinned between his hands and hair absolutely wild, Richie lifts his eyes from the coffee to look up at Eddie from under his glasses.

Eddie has a blinding sense memory of exactly how Richie sucked on his lip until Eddie saw red and got too dizzy to hold himself up.

He gets up from the barstool again immediately and turns back toward the fridge. “It’s basic science, alcohol is dehydrating, but so is coffee, you’re just adding to the problem.”

“Problem?” Richie repeats, barely above a murmur but _definitely annoyed_.

“Yeah, when you don’t have enough water your blood thickens, your tears thicken, you don’t see as well, you can’t think as clearly.” Eddie hoists out the entire Brita filter and starts taking down glasses. “Bev?”

“Sure,” Beverly replies, sounding amused.

“I _have_ a problem and it is five-foot-nothing and wearing a polo shirt.”

“Hey, every inch between me and six feet tall went into_ your forehead.”_

“Oh!” Richie almost shouts, then winces. In what can be loosely termed an inside voice, he goes on: “Eddie Spaghetti, coming for my _fucking life_. _Ha ha,_ Richie’s got a big forehead and an _even bigger dick_, oh my fucking head.” And he goes back to holding his skull.

“I’m going back to bed,” Bev announces.

“Please don’t leave me in charge of him,” Eddie says.

Mercifully, Ben comes back with the groceries fairly quickly after that. He comes in carrying bags of groceries on either arm. Eddie watches him, catches himself, and then immediately looks at Richie as if to say _Did you also just—?_ Richie is looking back at him, eyebrows raised as if to say _Yep_.

“So do you need help bringing in the groceries, Ben?” Eddie says, getting up from the table immediately to remove himself from the situation.

“I mean, there’s not a lot, but sure,” Ben replies.

Eddie goes out to the garage, gathers up the last of the grocery bags, and brings them back into the kitchen.

Richie is in the middle of saying, “—called him _Stan the Man_ and _Stanley Urine_, but we never combined those two into _Man Urine_.”

“This is why he’s haunting you,” Bev says. “That right there.”

“I am beginning to regret coming back to my own house,” Ben says.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Richie,” says Eddie.

Richie shrugs. “I call it like I see it.”

“The state of the entertainment industry, everyone,” Eddie announces.

Ben actually cooks very well. At one point he takes out a huge knife and just demolishes a bunch of fruit, including an entire watermelon.

Richie watches with his mouth slightly open. “Man, Haystack, why didn’t we have you_ mince_ the clown?”

“I have a certain set of skills,” Ben says.

He also fries bacon and eggs, though he is not eating it himself. He slings plates in front of people without much ceremony, and Bev makes toast. Eddie pours a lot of cream into his coffee and stirs. Richie, pleading hungover for reasons beyond his control, is visibly improving as he sits at the table and chatters.

“So what’s the plan?” Ben asks. “You can stay here as long as you want, if you need to sleep it off another night.”

Eddie watches his face, trying to catch if that’s something he’d actually want or if he’s being polite about them interrupting his time with Beverly.

“It’s another twenty-three hours to Los Angeles,” he says. “So it’s going to be another two days, at least, and we’re going to stop and sleep in a hotel _like human beings, Richie_.”

Richie puts up his hands. “What did I do?”

Eddie squints at him, makes the mistake of looking at his hands, and has the sudden and vivid memory of one running up his back. He drops his gaze back to his food. “So it depends on whether or not you get motion sickness.”

One of Richie’s eyebrows goes up. “Don’t you have pills for that, Dr. Kaspbrak?”

“Do pills help with ghosts?”

“Depends on the ghosts.”

Eddie thinks again of the BuSpar and again says nothing.

“Yeah, we can get on the road,” Richie says. “We’ll stop crashing your honeymoon.”

Bev gives a tolerant smile. “You’re not crashing.”

“Which just means you’re banging whether or not we’re here. I’ll go, I don’t need—” Richie gestures at Ben. “—all of that rubbed in my face all the time.”

When he turns around with the frying pan, Ben’s look is very dry and long-suffering. “Bacon? Please eat it so I don’t have to.”

Eddie allows himself two pieces of bacon and he glares at Richie the whole time, daring him to comment. Richie says nothing; he’s building a sandwich out of toast, bacon, and egg. Eddie tries to imagine getting back in the car with him, tries to imagine _talking about it_ or worse, _not talking about it_, both of which feel like they require so much decision making.

Richie said _Sleep in my bed with me_. Maybe Eddie thought he was getting brave back at the Townhouse, but nothing had happened then. A whole lot of nothing had happened, actually, nothing had happened repeatedly, moments Eddie could have pointed to and said _I know what it looks like, but nothing happened_.

That’s not it now. He’s getting back in a car with Richie, who says things like _come up here and let me show you how to kiss_ and _the deadlights show you the people you love dying_ and he saw Eddie, Eddie heard him screaming for him.

It’s not _news_ to Eddie. It’s just…

_Real and present danger_.

Of what?_ I’m not gonna do anything to you,_ Richie said.

Fine. Not of Richie. Of Eddie, and the vast sucking emptiness where his dread and anxiety and shame and guilt should be. There’s nothing. Just the vague sense that he’s doing something he shouldn’t, and that he should feel bad about it, shouldn’t he? But he doesn’t. He’s never—_laughed_ like that, in bed. Is that how it goes? Is it fine, if it goes like that, or is it just Richie?

_Hey, dumbass, you left your wife to go live with him, you know he’s in love with you, you keep crawling in bed with him, you’re not fooling anyone here._

It’s not about fooling anyone. Eddie’s never fooled anyone, he’s sure, that was why his mother was on his case all the time, she _knew_ somehow, she _knew_ and she tried to crush it out of him, because there’s just something about Eddie that means people can know by just _looking at him_, something _inherent to him_, and Stan said _be true_, Stan said _be proud_, Stan said _be honest_.

“I,” Eddie says, and his voice catches.

All the other sounds in the kitchen die, except the sound of Ben’s egg whites frying. He can feel eyes on him.

Eddie _made_ Richie tell him last night, when Richie was drunk and crying. Eddie used what Stan said to get it out of him after Richie told him and all of them no, more than once.

“I’m going to miss you,” Eddie manages.

“Honey,” Bev says.

She hugs him, but Eddie somehow feels worse. In fact, it’s the bad feeling he’s been waiting for all day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning continued: Richie and Eddie make out while Eddie is a _little_ drunk and Richie is _more_ drunk, and like, also had been crying. Like, I would not have gone for it, Richie expresses consent, Eddie backs off and apologizes, but like... if you want to talk about my rationale for that scene, and I do have one, we can do it in the comments.
> 
> Also, sometimes if you have a mood disorder and you imbibe a depressant like _alcohol_ it makes you _feel worse_, and Richie just exemplifies that when left to his own devices before Eddie manually resets his mood.
> 
> If you read this without getting the spoiler from the content warning beforehand... I have nothing to say for myself. Richie's forehead joke is word for word from _Eos 10_, a medical podcast in space by Ryan MacLachlan; there's a clip of MacLachlan delivering it circling around on tumblr somewhere, under the name _Ha ha_, I think, but I couldn't find it and searching for it totally screwed with my Google algorithm.


	9. In Spite of Better Judgment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie, with typical grace, talks to Eddie. Eddie, with typical dignity, makes a judgment call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SAMMIE SOFTOZIER DON'T READ THIS IF YOU EVER WANT TO LOOK ME IN THE EYE AGAIN.
> 
> Content warnings: the consent conversation, Eddie's usual fear of sexually-transmitted infection, Richie's ambiguous sexuality, internalized homophobia, mention of drug abuse, mention of suicide, accidental misgendering? of a minor character (Richie's not sure), racing thoughts, panic attacks, explicit sexual content, explicit consent.

Richie is fine.

No, really, he’s fine.

He’s managed to keep his mouth shut for the whole half an hour he’s been in the car. And he found a hole in the sleeve of his sweatshirt that he’s managed to widen by at least half an inch just by worrying at it with his thumb, and that’s an accomplishment right there, isn’t it? Because if he’s quietly ripping at his own clothes, at least he’s not _psychically influencing the radio_ or bothering Eddie.

Eddie’s road rage is in fine form. They’ve been on the highway for, again, about half an hour, and Eddie has already insulted three cars in front of them, addressing them in turn as “_asshole_,” “_Karen,”_ and _“asshole”_ again. So that’s fine too.

“So,” Richie says.

Eddie’s shoulders immediately hunch slightly and his hands creep a little higher on the steering wheel, a little closer to eleven and one.

“I told you I saw you die,” Richie says, slowly, like he’s trying to get the details right.

Eddie takes one hand off the steering wheel and pushes it over his mouth.

“And… you stuck your tongue down my throat.”

He puts his hand back on the steering wheel, jaw set. “That’s what I thought you’d say, you fucking moron.”

“Like, word for word? Because I’d hate to be predictable—and _speaking_ of unpredictable—”

“Jesus Christ I’m turning this car around and dropping you back off at Ben’s.”

Richie laughs, startling forward. “And going to L.A. without me?”

“Yes.”

“So are you going to leave a ‘free to a good home’ note around my neck, or a ‘may God forgive me for what I’ve done’ note?”

Eddie rolls his eyes.

“Was it the drunkenness, the crying, or the prophesying your death that turned you on?”

Instead of snapping at him, Eddie’s mouth opens slightly and he takes his left hand off the steering wheel and gestures meaninglessly, hand twisting palm up and then fingers spasming shut again.

“I should…” Richie’s waiting for a threat, but then Eddie surprises him by sighing. “…should not have done that.”

Richie closes his eyes and grimaces.

Yeah, he kind of asked for that, didn’t he.

“I mean, it’s gonna make things kind of weird between me and your mom—”

“I’m going to kill you, Richie,” Eddie grinds out.

Richie prefers hearing that to hearing_ I should not have kissed you._ Maybe it’s because Eddie has never delivered on his death threats, but _I’m never going to kiss you again_ remains to be seen, and also, it’ll hurt a lot longer than getting murdered would.

“—but that’s my problem, not yours.”

Eddie starts making the chopping motion with his hand over again, like he’s struggling to get the words in order. “I should not have kissed you, because you were drunk, and because I was drunk, and I should not have—have pushed you, about the honesty thing, because you were drunk—” His words are getting faster like they did when he was a kid, when Eddie just had to spit all the words out like if he didn’t no one was going to listen to him. “—and because emotions were high, and we had just talked to Stan, and that—that was not a thing that normal people do.”

Richie blinks once, then holds up his own right elbow to look down at himself.

“What are you doing?” Eddie still hasn’t turned to look at him, but he’s definitely watching him in his peripheral vision.

Richie grabs the hem of his shirt and makes a show of inspecting the fabric.

“Fucking _what_, Richie.”

Richie looks up and adjusts his glasses. “Hey, quick question, did we as a group get together and murder a killer clown last month, or…?”

Eddie, Mr. Keep Your Eyes on the Road, rolls his eyes. “Fuck you, Richie.”

“No no no, I feel like I remember _being possessed_ last night, is that a thing normal people do?”

“You are the most annoying human being I’ve ever met—”

“Which, I will remind you, I am not a human being, because human beings cannot do this—”

Richie reaches out and jabs the power button for the radio. What comes out sounds like techno for if the Lego people made a slasher movie.

_“But I’m stuttering—I’m stuttering again—”_

Richie lets out a loud _“Ha!”_ and punches the Seek button.

_“No one will listen and—”_

Richie pushes the button over and over again in quick succession and the song basically skips every other beat: _“one—un—stand—be—I’m—”_ Then Richie jabs the power button again, point proven.

“What the hell is that supposed to convey?” Eddie demands. “What forbidden emotions are you forcing into the radio?”

“I have no idea,” Richie says honestly. “I have a mood ring with different frequencies. It’s fucking weird. You have the location skills of an actual satellite, and, I will remind you, literally turned off the whole world outside our car the other day. You wanna talk about normal? Normal is _way_ behind us. You don’t want normal. You—” The end to that sentence is _want me_, but Richie gives up and splays his hands out, like he can contain the vast difference between acceptable reality and _this_ in one long radioactive tube.

“Are you under the impression that any of this is okay?”

_“Yes,”_ Richie groans, just about collapsing with it. “When that is the standard we’re operating under, you don’t have to self-flagellate over planting one on your willing friend, unless you wanna talk _timing_ and technique, because you split my lip, dude—”

“Don’t _dude_ me, you’re _not_ my friend, and _what do you mean I split your lip_?” Eddie’s voice cracks into a new octave.

_Gotcha_.

“Well I originally assumed your intent was to suffocate me and your weapon of choice was your face,” Richie says. “Which is a very visceral way to commit a crime, what a way to go—” Eddie looks like he’s not breathing. Richie cuts the shit and says, “I didn’t bleed on you, Eddie, relax.”

Eddie says nothing but his hands slide back down to ten and two and his upper body leans forward a little. Not like he’s choking up on the accelerator, but kind of the same way he keeled over last night, except in the _he’s terrified_ way.

“You’re not gonna catch anything from me,” Richie says.

Eddie says nothing.

This is important. Richie _cannot_ fuck this up.

“I have not gotten this far in life without knowing how to use condoms, I don’t inject anything into myself, I haven’t had any sketchy blood transfusions—”

“Condoms don’t protect against STDs.”

“Yeah, but when I date someone, the polite thing to do is go get someone to look at my blood,” Richie says patiently. “This is Los Angeles, you can practically get couples’ discounts on STD panels.”

Eddie blinks once. When he speaks, it’s not what Richie thought he was going to say.

“You dated?”

Oh.

“Well, you got married, why does that shock you?”

Eddie’s eyebrows do the thing when he asks, “To, like, women?”

Richie rolls his eyes.

“I’m serious.”

“You’re seriously something all right.” He both means that and doesn’t. “Are you jealous?”

“No.” Eddie seems to think about it and then says, “Yes.”

Richie feels his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “What?”

“Yes, I’m jealous, is that what you want to fucking hear, Richard?”

Something like fascination comes over Richie. _“Why?”_ It’s not like he’s a _commodity_.

Eddie audibly swallows. He bobs his head slightly as he says, “I’ve dated like one person in my life, and I married her, and I _still_—” His eyes widen and he shakes his head so quick and rapidly it looks like his face is vibrating for a second. “And you—” This time he thrusts his chest out and his shoulders creep forward.

Richie has never known Eddie Kaspbrak to be short on words before.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Fuck off.”

“I don’t!”

“You could’ve just—” He does the cutting hand gesture again, the one like he’s trying to underscore a point he isn’t actually managing to get out yet. “You could’ve just lived your whole life, and never—” Chop, chop, chop.

“Never got hammered and made out with a dude at a bar?”

Well that was more revealing than Richie really thought he was gonna go for today, but the past twenty-four hours have already been really fucking weird, what’s one more thing?

This makes Eddie blush. “You—?” And then he visibly stalls out.

He says nothing for so long that Richie starts leaning over to examine the road in front of them, getting a little concerned that Eddie’s operating the motor vehicle, and that’s enough to make Eddie reset and push him back into the passenger side.

“It’s not, like, something that made its way into my show,” Richie admits, face feeling hot in the silence. “It’s not that kind of a story. Are you telling me you never—?”

“No,” Eddie just about whispers.

“_Never?”_

“No.”

“So I was…?”

Eddie sucks his lower lip into his mouth and nods, eyes wide.

Richie feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest and, weirder than that, he kind of likes it.

“Not even kissing?” he asks.

“What part of_ no_ are you not getting, Trashmouth?”

Once Eddie starts being pissy again, it’s a little reassuring that Richie hasn’t broken him.

“People don’t—” That hand gesture is just a flail, really, Richie doesn’t have a better word for it. “I’m not you.”

“I’ve noticed,” Richie says. “That would be an entirely new form of ego trip.”

“Can you shut up for once?”

“I might, if you could finish a sentence. What do you think being me has to do with it?”

“You’re—” Wild wave in Richie’s direction. “You’re, like—you have_ fans_, you’re—”

“Funny?” Richie asks hopefully.

“No, you’re—people—”

“I am people?”

“You’re hot!” Eddie just about shouts.

Silence.

Then Richie grabs the seat adjuster and reclines the chair all the way back, because he cannot hold himself up and laugh about that at the same time.

Eddie fumes. “Shut up.”

Richie can’t even make a sound, he’s laughing so hard. Tears are starting to come out of his eyes and he can’t draw in a breath.

Eddie reaches the sonic speed of speech: “You’re an idiot, you’re too tall, you dress like you robbed a secondhand store that accepts only Hawaiian shirts, you don’t brush your teeth, you can’t keep your fucking mouth shut for twenty seconds, you only ever talk about your dick, and you’re _still_ hot, what _is that_, why are you _like this_, and me, I’ve dated _one person_ in my life because I have a _force field_ around me that tells everyone exactly the kind of person I’ve always been and who I’m always going to be, and you could have gone your whole life and nobody would have ever known, and I didn’t have that option, because people can just_ look_ at me and tell from the _everything about me_.”

And the roast is pretty funny but everything else Eddie says is not funny at all.

Richie can’t address the whole _see-through closet_ thing, he started in on that basically the second they sat down at the table with the _to a woman?_ thing. He can’t even tell Eddie that he dated women because it was the thing you do, but he never walked into a room, looked at one, and had to immediately start drinking to try and drown out the _oh no oh no oh no_.

He can, however, tell Eddie Kaspbrak exactly why he’s wrong.

“You think_ I’m _the hot one?” Richie demands. Sitting up is more difficult than he expected when he pulled this move; he makes some unflattering grunts while trying to haul himself back upright, and then he pulls the seat lever and the seat thumps him in the shoulder. “Of the two of us, are you kidding me? You—you—_seriously_? You know what people can tell about you? Aside from the fact that you have a stick up your ass so far that you should be—like—grilled with peppers and served at a Brazilian steakhouse? That you _use soap_. That you _drink milk_. That you are so small they can just set you on top of their mantle like the fucking Elf on the Shelf—you know who wanted to do that?”

“If you say you, I’m going to push you out of the moving car.”

_“Ben’s waiter,”_ Richie says. “It was all, _Mr. Hanscom! Mr. Hanscom’s friend. Will you be in town for a long time? Oh, you’re not sure? Well we hope to see you again.”_

“You are literally just describing a waitstaff job, Richie.”

“I fucking am not, he didn’t give a shit about me, probably because I look like I crawled out from under a Dumpster. You’ve seen a dentist in your whole life, man, you’ve got like the—” He waves. “The eyes. The face. The hair. The, like, body of Michael Phelps.”

Eddie snorts. “Do you mean like, in the trunk of my car, off to bury in the desert, or…?”

“Jesus, dude, have you seen you?” He pokes the frame of his glasses. “Look at these.” _Poke_. _Poke._ “I’m a forty-year-old man and my prescription will not stabilize long enough for me to get someone to shoot lasers into my eyes, you—” He can tell Ben that he looks like thirty Brazilian soccer players, but singing Eddie’s praises feels like reaching down his own throat and groping around for his heart. “I don’t know what the fuck women want, man, but you’re ahead of the game.”

Eddie is quiet for a moment, two flags of color sitting high on his cheeks.

Then he says, “I try not to drink milk, actually, humans weren’t meant to do that past a certain stage in development, it can lead to a lot of inflammation—”

“Oh, never mind, I see your problem.”

“Fuck you, Richie.”

“Fuck you!”

To Richie’s horror, Eddie reaches out and taps the power button for the radio. “Africa” by Toto comes wailing out.

“What the fuck?” Eddie asks.

_“Stanley!”_ Richie stabs the power.

Richie steals Eddie’s phone.

“If you send literally one text, I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

He ignores this but leans away from Eddie and holds the phone up in front of the window, like he can use the light to see through it if it’s authentic or something. “What if I text Ben and Bev to say that I’m still alive?”

“Then I will shortly make a liar of you.”

Richie chuckles. There’s a distinct tapping noise.

“Richie.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“Trashmouth.”

“Mm-hmm?”

There’s the whooshing sound of an outgoing text message and Eddie snarls, _“Richard.”_

“We’re gonna have to talk about that,” Richie says casually. “If you’re gonna say my name like that in public, we’re gonna have to talk about that.”

The blush just about punches Eddie across the face. Richie’s doing this on purpose so he’ll get distracted, he knows.

_“What did you send?”_

“Picture,” Richie says indifferently.

“Of _what_?”

“My dick. Anyway, I just wanted to take a look and see how Eddie Maps stacks up to Google Maps, since now we’ve got confirmation on your magical powers and—_holy shit, Eds._”

Logically that is a new phone and even if it weren’t Eddie has nothing incriminating on it; _illogically_ Eddie’s heart thumps in his chest. “What?”

“Does your Magical Mystery Tour take us through _Las Vegas_?”

“No,” Eddie decides immediately. He will do everything in his power to stop Richie Tozier from entering the Las Vegas city limits. He will circumvent the entire state of Nevada if he has to; he rendered Maine completely invisible; if he’s going to use his magical powers for anything it’s going to be stopping Richie from going to Vegas, Eddie cannot allow that to happen to Vegas.

“Are you sure? How far away is it?”

“Seventeen hours,” Eddie says immediately, and then grimaces. He doesn’t have the uncontrollable speech Richie has, there’s no excuse not to keep that to himself. “It’d be another day away, we wouldn’t get there tonight anyway, and it’s only five hours away from Los Angeles, there’s no point in going, I have my car with a dent in it and _four hundred dollars_ on my person right now, Richie, we’re not going to Vegas.”

Richie says nothing. In Eddie’s peripheral vision, his face has gone curiously blank.

“What did you do,” Eddie demands.

Richie’s mouth opens, closes, and then opens again.

“There is a… a non-zero chance… that I have, uh, about nine thousand dollars in my bag right now.”

“Fucking _WHAT?_”

Eddie actually looks away from the road to stare at him.

Richie has scrunched down a little in his seat, the left side of his face twisted up in a wink and his shoulders hunched up to shield himself from Eddie’s shriek.

“What did you do,” Eddie repeats. “What did you _do?_ What are you—_I packed your bag, Richie, _where are you hiding_ nine thousand dollars_, how did you _get_ nine _thousand dollars_, Richie? What the _fuck_ are you up to in Los Angeles?”

“Nothing! Nothing!” Richie protests, laughing but not like it’s funny. “It was my rainy day money. My going away money. Mike called and I got it all out of my safe and stuck it in my bag for going to Derry, in case I needed it.”

Eddie imagines that—imagines Richie, with no impulse control and an admitted love of Xanax, quietly squirreling money away in a safe, year after year, not knowing why. Nine thousand dollars? Nine _thousand_ dollars?

“You—” Eddie drags his eyes back to the road, hits the brakes, and snarls, “Fucking_ turn signal, Claire!”_ He tries to remind himself he’s in charge of a motor vehicle and he has to show some regard for their lives, no matter what _batshit_ things Richie says.

Eddie can imagine it, though. Getting the call from Mike, puking over the fire escape railing, going out on stage and flopping harder than he’s ever flopped before in his life, going home, opening the safe, packing a bag, getting on a plane, not to Derry, but to anywhere else. _Mid-life crisis_, other people would call it. _Running away. Leaving. _But not from what they thought he’d be fleeing.

Or—or. Going out on the streets of L.A., buying a nine-thousand-dollar ticket out of his body—Stan did it, and Eddie would never have expected that of Stan, so why not Richie? He loves—loves all of them, he does, but does he really know them?

It didn’t happen, he tells himself. No more than the vision that Richie had that scared him so badly. Richie dragged himself back into Derry and he banged on the gong in the Chinese restaurant and Eddie turned around to see him looking simultaneously familiar and unexpected, like a dream you’ve forgotten the details of.

“Why didn’t you use your_ nine thousand dollars_ to pay for your _murder trial, Richie?_” Eddie demands. “Ben flew your lawyer out from _Florida_—_I’ve been paying the tolls, Richie!”_

Richie’s mouth opens slightly and his head lolls forward a little. “I couldn’t do anything with it, Eddie. I couldn’t do anything at all, I only went to the police because I knew that if I didn’t Mike was gonna get in some trouble about the body in the library and the hospital was gonna have some questions about the thing in your face—or out of your face, more like, because you usually have more face than you did right then. I couldn’t. If Ben hadn’t found me a lawyer I would’ve gone up there without a lawyer and said, ‘Yeah, I killed him, can you blame me?’ And they would’ve—” He throws a thumb’s down sign, vicious as any Roman emperor. “—said, ‘Yeah, actually, we can,’ and I would’ve just never gotten up.”

In the wake of this Eddie feels his jaw snap shut. He didn’t expect Richie to unload all of that, or for what he said to be as close to his own thoughts as it was.

As an afterthought Richie says, “And Mike too, probably. Thank you, Ben Hanscom.”

It’s weird to hear him call Ben by name instead of by stupid nickname.

Eddie can’t exactly fault him for his sincerity—he was like, _just_ enraged over Richie’s clumsy attempts to put the walls back up, and that—_made him stick his tongue down his throat,_ Richie said, though Eddie didn’t nearly get that far before his head started spinning. He wanted—he wanted—

“We’re still not going to Vegas,” Eddie says.

They stop at a Panera in Utah.

It is the most conspicuously white Richie has ever felt in his entire life, but Eddie seems to buy into their whole ‘clean food’ schtick, whatever the hell that means, and since nothing Richie’s ever gonna eat again is gonna manage to live up to a Ben Hanscom breakfast, Richie goes along with it.

He didn’t think that they screened him in Utah—surely the Mormons must be opposed to him, like, on principle—but when Eddie throws himself down into a table with their buzzer between his hands, Richie looks around automatically and sees two girls watching them. As he watches he catches them look away, bow their heads together, and whisper. The one with her back to him actually turns to look over her shoulder at him again.

Shit.

Richie takes off his glasses.

“What?” Eddie asks. “Headache?”

“I’m fine,” Richie says.

Apparently the glasses thing works at least halfway, because it takes until Eddie’s inhaled his food and Richie is anxiously, self-consciously picking his way through his sandwich for one of them to come over. Richie hasn’t seen any conspicuous flashes from that direction, nothing that would indicate they’ve been taking pictures of him having late lunch with Eddie that Eddie might not want going around.

She’s also a little hesitant when she comes up and says, “Hi! Um, sorry to bother you, but has anyone told you that you look like Richie Tozier? Or, are you Richie Tozier?”

Richie has to put his glasses back on to see what Eddie thinks of this. Eddie’s completely flummoxed. He turns to the girl and gives her his polite smile.

“Yeah, I am Richie Tozier,” he admits.

She puts both hands over her mouth. “I’m—so sorry, I almost didn’t believe it, my girlfriend’s the bigger fan over there, I’m just… nosy and terrible meeting celebrities.”

Eddie’s eyes pop open but Richie’s not sure if it’s over _girlfriend_ or over the implication that Richie is a celebrity.

“No, it’s okay,” he says. “I—didn’t think I’d have any substantial fanbase out here, actually.”

She has Eddie’s haircut, kind of. Back in the booth, her girlfriend—and he doesn’t know if that’s in the way that his mother always used to refer to her_ girlfriends_ or if there are baby lesbians losing their cool over him in a Panera in Utah—has a very familiar expression on her face: utter mortification and exasperation. Literally the way Eddie looks at him _all the time_.

“I—don’t know much of your standup, sorry, but I’ve seen you on TV a couple times? And you’re a meme? And your voiceover things? I just looked them up when I was trying to figure out if it really was you, I didn’t know they were you—” God, _please_ don’t let Eddie find out about his voiceover work. “—but she says that she ‘unironically loves Richie Tozier,’ and your impressions, and she says you’re a gift.”

_“Jordan!”_ the girl back in the booth hisses. Come to think of it, with that name and that look Richie’s not sure this person’s a girl after all.

Eddie has stopped looking startled and is starting to look gleeful.

“Unironically, huh?” Richie manages.

Jordan puts their hands over their mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m so bad at meeting celebrities, I have like no self-control, I kind of accosted a Broadway guy on the street one time and—she wouldn’t get up to talk to you, so I kind of… mom-friend overrode it, and—would you mind taking a picture with us? It’s okay if you don’t want to or if you can’t, that’s totally fine.”

_“Jordan!”_ says Jordan’s girlfriend again.

“I… don’t take pictures,” Richie manages. He takes one picture, and then he has to take pictures with everyone who shows up with a camera. He keeps glancing over to check on Eddie’s face; Eddie is leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed, his expression saying nothing so much as _Gotcha, bitch_. “But I’ll—I’ll meet with you, if your—” He looks over at the mortified girl in the booth. She has Bev’s hair, a red bob, but her roots are growing out sandy.

Jordan turns around and gives kind of an exaggerated wave, and the girl gets up and creeps over like Jordan’s physically reeling her in.

“I am so sorry,” she says.

“It’s completely fine,” Richie says. “What’s your name?”

“Sarah,” she says, and then turns bright red.

He tries to pitch his voice casual and reassuring. “Well hi, Sarah. I’m not gonna diss your taste or anything, but this is Eddie, and he’s known me since I was thirteen, and he says I’m not funny. What did Ben call me yesterday?”

Eddie looks back off his balance once Richie drags him into this, but he obligingly says, “America’s worst comedian.”

“That was it,” Richie says. “You can probably tell because I’m in a Panera in Utah on a Thursday.”

Sarah gives the kind of terrified smile that Richie felt on his face dealing with a killer clown, and _Jesus_, Richie’s not cool _or_ funny _or_ a celebrity. She doesn’t ask him to do any voices or anything, but Jordan slaps a hand to their forehead and produces a cell phone in one of those leather wallet cases with a little orange robot on the front. That job was an hour making weird noises into a microphone, and a film credit that Richie did nothing to earn, but people still hand him pictures to sign.

“Sorry—again, totally okay if the answer is no, but do you do autographs?”

“I’ll—I’ll sign for you, but I don’t have—” Richie looks around, not putting it past Eddie to pull out a pen specifically to throw gasoline on the fire.

Jordan bolts back to her booth and brings out a pencil case—student—and runs back over to hand him a Sharpie.

Richie uncaps the Sharpie and holds the plastic top in his teeth. “Do you want it to you specifically, or?”

“Just your name is fine,” Jordan says, eyes wide like they didn’t expect to get that far.

Richie signs on the back of the case so his autograph doesn’t completely take over the front of her phone case, and then caps the Sharpie again. He blows on the wet ink and hands both phone and Sharpie back to her. “Sorry to like, get teeth marks in your pen.” He doesn't know why he did that. Why did he do that?

Jordan shakes their head so quickly it blurs. “No no no, totally fine, thank you so much, you didn’t have to do that at all, I’m sorry for interrupting your meal, thank you—” This last is to Eddie, and _Jesus_ this kid _talks_ like Eddie too.

Eddie himself is grinning, arms still crossed. “No, thank you.”

“He’s not gonna let this go,” Richie says.

“I’m sorry?” Jordan offers.

“Don’t be. I deserve it.”

Sarah grabs Jordan by the arm and marches them both back to their table, her “Thank you” quick and apologetic. They sit back down in their booth and start gathering up their empty dishes, and Richie hears one of them burst into nervous giggles.

Eddie waits until they leave the restaurant—with a “Bye! Thank you again!” thrown in their direction as they flee—and then he just grins at Richie.

Richie puts his elbows on the table. “Oh god, I wasn’t funny at all.”

“Lesbians have crushes on you.”

“They fucking do not, Eddie.”

“Oh my _god_,” Eddie says. “You don’t take pictures. You have a policy for that? What does _I’ll meet with you_ mean?”

These are exactly the moments for which Richie went on anti-anxiety medication. His hands are shaking. He sips his oversugared iced tea for some kind of lifeline. “Sometimes if people see other people taking a photo with you, they come up and are like ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re worth getting a photo with.’”

“Oh my _god_.”

“The little one talked like you, did you notice?”

“She did not. The red one _loves you unironically_.”

“D’you love me unironically?” Richie murmurs.

As predicted, Eddie’s face flames. “Finish your goddamn sandwich,” he says. “Did you think taking your glasses off would make you incognito?”

“Yes,” Richie says, and shoves the remaining half of his sandwich into his mouth.

Eddie gets stuck on a bathroom floor.

He was doing pretty well. They stopped at a hotel—an actual hotel, _Richie_—around nine at night, though they could have gone later. It’s less than twelve hours from here to Los Angeles—_not Vegas, Richie_—and Eddie mostly manages to keep his cool when they walk into the lobby. He brought in one suitcase and his toiletry bag. Then he wandered over to look at a display of flyers for the nonexistent tourism in Whipup, Utah, and tried to pretend his ears weren’t burning as he left Richie with the responsibility of checking them in. And then he tried to pretend he didn’t get a sinking swoop in his stomach when Richie ordered a room with two beds.

He should probably be more concerned with the idea that Richie has _nine thousand dollars_ in his bag, which he just casually held as he talked to the manager like it had nothing more valuable in it than the loose toothbrush. Eddie’s gonna count his money at some point, subtract what he has from four hundred, and then demand half of the difference to make up for Richie’s half of the tolls.

Eddie thought he was doing pretty well. Then he closed the door on himself and Richie in a hotel room and looked at the two beds and thought _You could_—and then he grabbed his toiletry bag, marched into the bathroom, and did not come back out.

He didn’t even clean up or anything. He made an attempt at brushing his teeth and realized he was shaking too badly to hold his brush, and then he spat and rinsed his mouth and toothbrush and then kind of sat down with his back pressed up against to the bathtub and tried to take deep breaths.

And now he’s been sitting here on the floor for such a long time that his ass has gone flat and numb and Richie’s knocking on the door going, “You alive in there, Eduardo?”

“Fine,” Eddie says, his voice much higher than it ought to be. He tries stretching his arms over his head like Ben showed him, but instead of opening up his chest it just makes him feel stupid for waving his arms on the floor of a hotel bathroom.

It’s cleaner than the bathroom in the motel. Not that that’s a difficult bar to leap. Eddie has had a long time to study these tan square tiles and the uniform grout between them. The housekeeping does a pretty nice job.

What does two beds mean? They literally haven’t slept apart since before It, not counting Eddie’s brief trip to New York. Even in the motel Eddie was too tired to think about it, sleeping fully dressed and first sitting up in the car and then facedown on the disgusting wool blanket, and Richie casually took his shoes off; and immediately after that Richie drove through the night rather than put himself in a hotel room with Eddie, and then Eddie really intended to sleep on Ben’s couch but he was tipsy and comfortable and too exhausted to get up, and now they don’t have the excuse of being tired, Richie deliberately reserved a room with two beds, and _what does that mean_? Is Eddie that bad at kissing? Does Richie expect there to be more kissing?

Does Eddie want that?

It would be a lot easier, Eddie reflects, if he didn’t want that. Because now he’s either going to have to walk back out there and pick a bed, or he’s going to have to ignore one of them and watch Richie’s eyebrow go up as Eddie climbs into bed with him, and Eddie doesn’t know what’s going to happen there but he has a few blurry confused hopes and fears. Both at the same time. It’s a gift and a curse.

Is Eddie going to puke? Is puking at the first sign of trouble contagious? If he pukes he’s not going to want Richie to kiss him, but more than that he really doesn’t want to puke. He’s actually a little bit afraid that the idea wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for Richie, and that should be disgusting, but Eddie _wants it so bad_.

Richie knocks on the door again.

“Sure you’re okay in there, Eds?”

_Don’t call me that._

_Please call me that._

“I’m fine,” he says. It’s a flagrant lie. Airless.

“Okay,” Richie says. “If you’re fine, can I come in?”

Eddie takes a deep breath that helps not at all, and then reaches up and unlocks the door. Then he sits back down, folds his knees up to his body, and stares at the pipe under the sink in front of him.

Richie opens the door slowly and, once he realizes where Eddie is, takes care not to hit him with the door but slips inside beside him. He takes a moment to look down at the top of Eddie’s head—Eddie wants to _die_—and then he also sinks down to the ground. Just folds himself up like a grasshopper, next to Eddie, leaning against the bathtub.

Eddie is such a freak and he’s worried about nothing and if he had a chance he’s blown it anyway, by choking in the kitchen with Ben and Bev about the chance to be honest and by freezing up right now, when Richie can see him—

“How do you change a tire?” Richie asks.

Eddie blinks. “What?”

“How do you change a tire? Come on, Kaspbrak, this could save my life one day.”

“What are you—?” Eddie blinks hard and remembers Richie saying something about that in the airport, his blank _I fucked up_ expression as soon as Ben and Bev made it clear that he was the only one there who didn’t know how to change a car tire and that he’d put himself in a trap. “How can you not know that, Richie?”

“Do I look like I do anything laborious?” Richie holds out his arms to either side; his forearm brushes Eddie’s thigh. Richie’s _arms_. He folds back up again, both arms wrapping around his knees, all attentive like a kindergartener ready for story time.

Eddie tries to focus, blinking hard to try and drag himself out of this bathroom and into the moment of auto emergency. _Flat tire_. “You, uh, you pull the car over.”

“Gee, thanks, Eds, I thought I was going to repair it from _inside the vehicle_—”

“Shut your mouth, Tozier, I’m trying to think.”

Like that's ever stopped Richie. “Oh, well if you’re _trying to think_—”

“Shh.” Eddie drums his knuckles on the side of his skull, trying to remember how cause and effect work. “Not on a narrow shoulder, or you’ll just get bug-on-a-windshielded—”

“Is that the technical term?”

“Shut _up_. And you put on your hazards.”

“Okay.”

“And you put on the parking brake.”

“How much of this happens without getting out of the car?”

Eddie knows what he’s doing and he’s kind of mad that it’s working. “And then you get out of your car, and you go to the trunk, and you pull out your wheel wedges.”

“My fucking _what_—?”

“You don’t have wheel wedges? Do you even have a car in Los Angeles? How are you allowed to drive a car without wheel wedges?”

“I don’t know how I’m allowed to do anything in the state of California.”

Eddie blinks hard and says, “And if you’re changing a front tire, you put the wheel wedges behind the back tires, and if you’re changing a rear tire, you put the wedges in front of the front tires, so that the car doesn’t roll and literally kill you.”

Richie whistles. “Duly noted. Gotta get me some wheel wedges.”

“And then if your hubcap covers the lug nuts, you use the flat end of your lug wrench—”

“Can we stop?” Richie asks. “Can we just take a moment and dwell on ‘lug nuts’?”

“You are a _child_—”

“I’m thinkin’ I must be, I don’t know how to change a flat tire, I don’t know why they gave me a driver’s license in the first place.”

“—and you remove the hubcap. And then you use the lug wrench, and you turn the lug nuts—”

“Which way?” Richie interrupts.

Eddie stares at him. “What?”

“Which way do you turn the lug nuts?”

Eddie stares directly through him, not seeing him. “I don’t know—it’s righty-tighty, lefty loosey, the car’s not right in front of me, Richie.”

Richie starts laughing. “_Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey_, that’s the expertise I come to you for, Eds.”

“Shut up. Any way you don’t take the lug nuts off, you only do that when you take the tire off, because you don’t want to lose them. And then you get the jack, and you put it under the car—there’s a spot—” He pulls a face again, trying to articulate the concept he’s very familiar with but having trouble getting at. “—under the car, under the plastic, with the metal exposed right there for the jack. You’re supposed to carry a piece of wood to brace your jack on asphalt.”

“I have never had difficulty bracing my own jack. Continue.”

Eddie rolls his eyes mightily. “And you unscrew the lug nuts.”

“Well thank goodness, they were getting blue.”

Eddie leans forward and presses his forehead into his knees. “I fucking hate you.”

“Yeah, but do you feel better?”

Weirdly, yes. Now Eddie feels like the entire right half of his body is straining to pick up Richie’s radio waves, but it’s no longer the abject panic that had him struggling to breathe earlier.

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Do you want to stop?”

“No, you don’t know how to change a flat tire!” Eddie’s going to punish him for bringing him here in the first place. Richie rolls his eyes and looks tortured, as Eddie tells him the rest of the process of changing a tire, finishing with, “And then you go see a mechanic, because spare tires aren’t supposed to handle long drives or high speeds, it’s like putting—” Like putting gauze on a stab wound. “—a band-aid on the problem.”

“Well thank you so much, Professor Kaspbrak,” Richie says, looking like he’s regretting his distraction technique already. “How will I ever repay you for sparing me from this ignorance?”

“You can get some wheel wedges, a lug wrench, and a piece of wood to brace your jack, I just told you.”

“Mmm, well, if that’s what you’re into.” Richie turns slowly and reaches across to put his fingers under Eddie’s chin.

All the nerves in Eddie’s body sit up, straining, and Eddie’s heart thuds like a car falling onto him.

Richie leans over slowly, staring Eddie in the eye, and he pauses with just a breath of space between their faces. “How about this? Can I do this?” he asks gently.

Eddie’s mouth is slightly open and he can feel himself struggling to breathe already, but Richie’s not moving, he’s just going to leave him hanging here and keep looking _smug_ at him unless—

“Yes,” he whispers.

Richie kisses him. All of Eddie’s hypersensitivity cries out in relief and his lips buzz. Richie pulls away just as quick, just enough for Eddie to get in a gulp of air, and then Eddie leans back over, stretching out his neck and thinking _You’re not getting away that easy, you’re not going to make me look like some idiot teenager melting down over a peck_, and unfolds his arms to reach for Richie’s face and hold him.

Richie sighs just a little through his nose. His breath whooshes across Eddie’s fingers.

He wants to kiss slow, Eddie can tell, like Eddie’s still on the verge of a freakout and he’s trying not to startle him, but Eddie’s already in, he’s already past the scary part, he did it, and Richie's caution is almost annoying. He untwists so his knees are no longer in his way and he leans across Richie, tilting his head back and making him open his mouth and trying to push him, trying to make him push back. _Come on. For real._

Richie gasps a little bit, pressed to the bathtub at the shoulder with nowhere to go, and then slides his tongue along Eddie’s lip, _infuriatingly_ slow. A spike of heat goes straight through Eddie, splits him in half from groin to chin, and he gets a handful of Richie’s hair and _pulls_.

“Oh fuck,” Richie says, lips moving against Eddie’s, words falling into Eddie’s mouth. Eddie can feel him breathing, feel his stupid tall body all folded up and in his own way but Richie’s not moving, is just letting Eddie kiss him.

Eddie loses it a little bit.

“I’m not gonna _break, Richie!”_ he hisses, and kind of throws his weight against Richie, trying to get him to react, and the next thing Eddie knows they’re on the floor. Richie twists his head away to avoid colliding it with the door, Eddie can feel the opposite tug against his knuckles where they’re pressed up against the back of Richie’s head. He tightens his grip and Richie makes a punched out little noise and his eyes are open and wide. Eddie drops his head and kisses him and pushes at the hinge of his jaw to get him to open his mouth, and then he really does try to stick his tongue down Richie’s throat, or at least into his mouth. He feels his whole body tense up as he does it, like he can climb inside him, just take up space in his mouth and in his chest where he’s _warm_ and—

Richie’s hand sinks into Eddie’s hip, two fingers hooking into Eddie’s shirt and one through a belt loop. The other slides across Eddie’s cheek, trying to get space between them again. Richie tilts his head all the way back and gasps, “_Jesus, Eds, _take it easy, there’s no rush, I am basically a—” He takes another sucking breath as Eddie tugs at his hair again, trying to bring him back. “—a sure thing here—”

“No,” Eddie says, and slants his mouth across Richie’s again. He feels Richie’s hands spasm, little points of pressure at his hip and where Richie’s fingertips rest against the back of his neck, sudden prick of nails.

Richie’s chest rises under him and then Richie says, “Fine,” and the whole room windmills around him, and then Eddie’s on his back. The tile is cold and he flinches away from it automatically, and then Richie is settling down on top of him like it’s just that easy, knees bracketing Eddie’s legs on either side and hips sinking his weight onto Eddie’s pelvis, and yeah, Richie’s not having any trouble getting hard over him this time.

_I did that,_ Eddie thinks deliriously, _that was me_.

Richie lies on top of him and it’s a weird intimacy, being stomach to stomach with another person like that even through their clothes, and then he’s putting his hands on either side of Eddie’s chin and Eddie’s arching up and straining for the kiss. Richie gives him that and no more, dragging it out.

Eddie finds himself jerking abortedly, trying to shift Richie’s weight, but he can’t, Richie’s too much bigger than him and Richie’s opening his mouth and quietly sucking on his tongue. He makes a stupid noise through his nose and grabs for Richie’s side, rucking up his shirt and getting his hands on skin, and Richie shivers and Eddie can’t get away from it so he sinks his nails in to feel Richie hiss and his back arch, shoving Eddie down a little bit more into the floor.

Eddie twists his head up to breathe and hears himself say, “Oh,” a little hard knot of sound he didn’t mean to make at all.

“That better?” Richie kisses under his jaw, under his chin, mouth hot. “That what you want?” His voice is low and soft and completely new, and Eddie feels his hips try to lift off the bathroom floor and straight into Richie’s. It’s a shock of pleasure he didn’t expect and he makes another embarrassing sound, and Richie purrs out something just shy of a moan into his ear, which makes him shake.

“You—I—” Eddie manages, and then grits his teeth and rocks his hips up, trying to make that sound again.

Richie’s back moves weirdly, his shoulders shifting, and then he says, “_Fuck_, Eddie,” in a way Eddie’s not used to hearing from him either. “God, you’re good.” Eddie’s face burns, startled, and Richie doesn’t care what saying that did to him, just puts his mouth back on Eddie’s neck and sucks _hard_.

Like Richie’s got his whole limbic system on a string, Eddie shakes for that. “I can’t,” he says nonsensically, he hears himself talking without deciding to. He drags his nails higher up Richie’s back and Richie huffs out a breath. Eddie hears the shift of his legs and then there’s deliberate pressure _right up against his cock through his jeans_, and Richie grinds his thigh into him.

“Pretty sure you can,” Richie says, and up until then Eddie would have said, _No, I’m an adult, I’m not going to get off dry humping like some stupid kid_, but then Richie puts his teeth back on his neck and Eddie realizes he’s about to come on a bathroom floor in a hotel in Utah. From a little kissing and grinding and Richie holding him down.

“Stop, stop stop stop,” Eddie gasps, and Richie does. Lets him go and lifts off him so that the cold air stings his hot skin and steals Richie’s warmth right out of Eddie’s clothes, and Eddie puts his nails in the palm of his hands and grits his teeth and tries to ride out the stab of _need_ that pins him to the floor.

Up on his knees, Richie looks wrecked, and he’s staring at Eddie with wide eyes. “Oh my god,” he says. Eddie scrunches his eyes shut, unable to look at him, face and chest stinging with mixed embarrassment and desperation. Richie’s voice is breathy and reverent: “Oh my god, Eddie, please, please let me see, I’ll do anything.”

“I can’t,” Eddie moans, trying to make Richie understand. When Richie talks the sudden cold seems to matter less; Eddie’s trying to hang on here. “You don’t—I can’t—I—”

He feels Richie get closer to him, hears the denim of his jeans sliding on the tile because _this is a hotel bathroom_. His voice is much closer to Eddie’s ear when he speaks again.

“You don’t have to,” he says. “But I want you to. If you don’t want it, that’s fine, but if you want it, just let me give you what you want, that’s all, let me make you feel good—”

Richie’s words sink down Eddie’s spine and his toes curl and he makes an incoherent sound of refutation. The word _good_ rings in his head, he feels good, this is how it’s supposed to feel, this is how being with Richie feels, and all Eddie has to do is let him—

He hears himself panting. He swallows—his mouth is dry—and he manages, “Yes.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“Yes?” Richie asks.

“Yes, _don’t make me say it again_—”

There’s a quick sound as Richie gets up and then to Eddie’s surprise he’s being lifted, Richie’s hands dragging him up by the armpits, and Eddie’s not _that_ small; his eyes snap open but Richie’s trying to get the bathroom door open and steer him around it in the same moment, talking, “Okay, whatever you want, come on, we’ll go fast, come on.”

Eddie grabs hold of Richie’s sleeves and, completely dazed and clumsy, lets Richie walk him backwards out of the bathroom, spinning him, and he realizes where he is right before Richie drops him back onto the bed and slots down on top of him, on the _filthy hotel bedspread_, and Eddie can’t even find the breath to complain. Richie’s eyes are huge and dark and he reaches up to pull off his glasses and Eddie grabs him by the wrist, says, _“Don’t,_” and Richie’s eyes get even wider behind his lenses and then they’re kissing again, which is awkward because Richie is definitely trying to drag them both higher up the bed.

Eventually he seems to give up and reaches down and drags Eddie’s knee up and over his hip so they fit together, Eddie’s back twisted so Richie can lay on his shoulders and Eddie’s cock can slot up against his hip, and Richie’s shifting his weight sideways to make Eddie shake again, saying in Eddie’s ear, “Come on, just like that, just take what you want.”

Mortified, Eddie considers calling the whole thing off again, but then Richie’s lips fit behind his ear again and Richie’s breathing hard and kissing and Eddie’s whole body burns but especially under Richie’s mouth, and he hitches his hips up against Richie and hears himself moan and Richie’s breathing stutter. He bites Eddie very gently, those _stupid crooked teeth_ on Eddie’s throat, and Eddie pants and he thinks Richie bruised him when he dragged him up off the floor and Richie’s face is tucked in his throat and his glasses are against Eddie’s skin and no doubt being smudged to all hell, and Eddie grinds down into him one more time and realizes with a great lurch that he’s about to go over. Richie knows too, based on the way he goes taut with attention and whispers, _“Yes, please,”_ and then Eddie jerks his hips one more time and comes.

He feels himself make a helpless desperate sound as he does, and his face burns, but he closes his eyes and smells Richie’s hair and presses his lips together and does it. Richie reaches down and puts a hand on Eddie’s ass and pulls him tighter against him, little thrusts, Eddie thinks absurdly _like I’m fucking him_ and sinks his nails so deep into Richie’s shoulder that Richie moans a little in his ear.

He rides it out until the oxygen reaches his brain again and then he finds himself, sweating and shaking and filthy, with Richie leaving little kisses on his neck. The room isn’t spinning but he kind of feels like it should be.

“Holy fuck, Eds,” Richie whispers.

Well, not really. Eddie throws his arm across his face so that his eyes are hidden in the crook of his elbow and then jabs Richie in the side with his knee. “Now you, come on.”

“What, really?”

Eddie takes his arm down immediately to glare at him; Richie’s face is flushed and his glasses completely obscured from pressing into Eddie’s skin but he can see how big they are, how dark, the fans of his eyelashes.

“What the fuck kind of question is that of _course_ really,” Eddie says.

“Jesus.”

Richie nudges Eddie’s leg away and Eddie feels his foot land heavy on the floor, an uncomfortable slick shift as wet fabric slides against him, _ugh_, he can’t believe he just did that,_ in his pants at his age_. The mattress shifts as Richie gets one knee up and then there’s the sound of a zipper opening—a courtesy he didn’t afford to Eddie, thanks much. Eddie sits up, trying to see what he’s missing, but his vision is obscured by Richie’s shoulders and black hair from where his forehead’s planted on Eddie’s chest.

Richie says, _“Oh,” _and then urgently: _“Mm, Eddie_,” and then his hips kick forward and his weight shifts all along the mattress. Eddie, who bit down on his lip _hard_ when Richie said his name, feels Richie’s breath across his chest through the fabric of his shirt.

There are a few seconds where the only sound is Richie breathing hard, and then Richie kind of falls onto the bed next to him, sudden impact of weight making the mattress bounce under him. Eddie, utterly grossed out by how slick he feels right now, feels his shoulders jump up to his ears.

_“Fuck,”_ Richie says, not quite as broken as he moaned it into Eddie’s ear, but still not the way Eddie’s used to hearing him.

Slowly Eddie sits up, trying not to move his hips at all. He gets his right elbow under him and just stares until Richie looks up, mouth open and lips red. He waits.

Richie seems to have forgone higher thought function. He stares back up at Eddie, expression somewhere between reverent and concerned and creeping toward the latter the longer Eddie just looks at him.

“You’re not gonna say it?” Eddie demands, unimpressed.

“What?” Richie says.

“_‘Yes, that was kind of the point,’_” Eddie says in his best Trashmouth Tozier impression, and then he slaps Richie in the shoulder and turns away. “I can’t believe you made me think that, what the fuck, Richie.”

“No, no, no, come back here—”

“If you touch me with your jizz-covered hand, I’m going to rip the showerhead out of the wall and beat you to death with it,” Eddie says, pulling away from him.

“No, no, you don’t get to do my voice and then not kiss me, come here—”

Eddie makes a strangled noise and leans back and lets Richie kiss him. He didn’t know how badly he needed it until Richie’s mouth is on his again, and then he feels himself shaking and tries slowly to relax, as much as he can on this hotel duvet and with his underwear rapidly cooling against his skin. Richie kisses him like he wanted to kiss in the first place, like he’s coaxing Eddie down from a high, and Eddie lets him this time because he’s too shaken up to do much of anything else. Richie doesn’t try to touch him with his hands or anything but his mouth, which is good, because then Eddie would really have to kill him.

As Eddie’s breathing returns to as close to normal as he thinks it’s going to get, Richie pulls his head back and looks at him; his eyes are heavy-lidded under the smeared lenses.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I didn’t bring a _biohazard bag, Richard_,” Eddie snaps, because he really has no idea what he’s going to do with these clothes. “I didn’t bring c—condoms, what…”

Richie kisses him again, sweet and sticky with his swollen lips. “Put them in my bag, it’s fine, I don’t care.”

“I’m _not_ going to do that, you have a _loose toothbrush_ in there.”

Richie tilts his head a little bit and drops his chin and gives Eddie a very cool look that suggests this matters not at all to him.

“God, you’re the worst,” Eddie says.

Richie smirks and shrugs and takes off his glasses with his left hand.

Eddie—who is still wearing _shoes_, he realizes with horror—gets one foot up and kicks him in the calf. “Go wash your hands, Jesus.”

“Are you gonna freak out while I’m in the next room?”

Some of the shaking comes back to Eddie. “It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it?” he asks, which is not a _No_.

“Mm-hmm.” Richie waves his own glasses by one of the long legs that rest on his ears. “Don’t forget, I know your secret, you’re hot for the glasses.” Despite his words, he drops them on the bed beside Eddie, completely careless, and then groans and climbs up off the bed and back onto his feet. He’s wearing socks, he took his shoes off at some point, Eddie realizes, watching him go, but he’s basically still fully dressed too; his jeans are even still up on his hips.

He realizes he’s staring at Richie’s ass and turns away, gagging as his clothes shift wetly against him. He goes over to his suitcase, lays it down flat, and starts digging out clean pants and underwear. Then he rolls his eyes at himself, puts the pants back, and pulls out his pajama bottoms instead.

“Can you bring me a towel?” he calls to Richie.

He can hear the sink running in the bathroom. “Yeah.”

Eddie waits impatiently for Richie to reappear with the towel. Instead of coming back out like a normal person, Richie appears in the doorway and lobs the towel at Eddie’s head; it misses completely and Eddie has to stretch out his arm and catch it.

“Hey,” Richie says. “We’re not using the other bed, are we?”

“Are you stupid?” Eddie asks.

“Well, yeah,” says Richie.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “No, of course not, get out of the bathroom, I have to take a shower.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh... yeah. I can't believe they did that either.
> 
> The angry Lego song Richie hears on the radio is "I Got No Time" by The Living Tombstone. If you want to actually learn the lyrics and hear some words, try the cover by CG5. It's from Five Nights at Freddie's, and I definitely think of it more as a Losers Club song than as a Richie-specific one.
> 
> While we're discussing music, did you guys know that there's a song by Ok Otter called "Richie Tozier"? It's? Good??? I may have listened to it on loop for three hours while writing this chapter.
> 
> I'm getting on a road trip of my own tomorrow (with my mom, so not nearly as fun as Eddie and Richie's) and I'll be out of town until Monday, so I don't know if I'll be able to publish a chapter before then. Almost definitely not on Saturday, though. I leave you with this impression.


	10. In My Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last leg of the road trip. Richie makes a phone call and then a good choice. Eddie harnesses the power of belief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you kidding me this chapter is _how_ many pages over target? _Ten???_ This is what I get for going twenty-four hours without posting, I just get a backlog, but I couldn't split the chapter. Next one will be the end, for real, I'm basically positive, there are no other scenes left to write EXCEPT THE ONES I WANTED TO WRITE IN THE FIRST PLACE WHEN I STARTED THIS PROJECT, RICHARD. EDWARD.
> 
> Content warnings: anxiety and depression, insomnia, racing thoughts, spiraling, Richie Tozier's ambiguous sexuality, mentions of suicide and victim-blaming (Stan), misuse of anxiety medication (Richie), basically a lot of mental health things that don't get unpacked completely, internalized homophobia, gambling, mentions of homophobic bullying.
> 
> Chapter title from "Latch" by Disclosure, featuring Sam Smith. Oh and before I forget, thank you to [theappleppielifestyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle) for asking the important question, "How does Richie feel about all of this?" They are the reason that this chapter is not the end, and this is a good thing.

Richie wakes up at four in the morning.

This is what a combination of anxiety and not being a teenager anymore does to him. He wakes up to find himself basically on the edge of the mattress with Eddie right behind him, face in Richie’s back as usual.

There’s a whole damn mattress out there.

He stares at the clock on the nightstand until the blue light renders into something he can identify. Without his glasses on his eyes fuck up sixes, eights, and nines, but fours are pretty impossible to confuse for most other things, and as soon as he processes what time it is he thinks _This again?_

Even after everything that happened in Derry—and being exonerated for _murder_—and sleeping with _Eddie fucking Kaspbrak_—Richie doesn’t get to have a thing and enjoy it.

Eddie at least is breathing very calmly and regularly, slightly muffled. Richie had some skepticism (read: crippling fear) over how this was going to go, once Eddie came back out of the shower. If Eddie ever came out of the shower; while Richie waited he contemplated the likelihood that Eddie was just going to stay in there under the spray until he wore away like a little wax doll.

But Eddie reappeared shortly, face bright red and hair wet and fully dressed in a _goddamn pajama set_, like he needed eighty buttons of armor between Richie and himself, and snapped at Richie that if he said anything Eddie would “smother you to death.”

Richie, being Richie, said, “Promise?” and it was half a sex joke and half _please kill me._

But Eddie only heard the one and wrinkled his nose and started to drag the bedspread off of the bed and onto the other one.

“So has this put you off motel bedspreads for literally forever?”

Richie’s intent—if he could be said to have an intent beyond _Now_ when he got Eddie onto the bed—had not been to confirm that manifestation of Eddie’s germaphobia that has been least convenient on a road trip. But Eddie in turn was pretty obviously fighting off a spiral just like the one Richie had just talked him out of, and Richie wasn’t sure if he thought he could just ward it off by running his mouth like usual or if he just needed to make the situation worse. _Little of column A, little of column B_.

Eddie ignored him, having disposed of the bedspread. “Tell me you’re not going to sleep like that.”

Richie looked down at himself, frowned, and then pulled his t-shirt over his head.

“No—” Eddie put a hand over his face, covering his left eye and blinking fast with the other.

Richie threw his shirt into the corner.

“Oh my god,” Eddie said. “I mean, take a shower! You’re sweaty!”

“Do you think that falling asleep with a hundred and fifty pounds of octopus on my back will be not sweaty?” Richie asked

Eddie’s one visible eye popped wide open, like he didn’t know of his own bedhog tendencies. Like he thinks Richie just likes being able to put his whole hand on the floor and brace himself.

“I do not,” Eddie said.

But here he is, folded in on himself and pressed right into Richie. A mummy in a bedsheet and gray pajamas.

Richie _aches_.

He’s never lost it like that just watching someone. Eddie said _You could have gone your whole life without_ and yeah, Richie knows he could have. A drunken makeout with a strange dude in a bar who probably doesn’t know that he could get money for talking about his kiss with the guy in the broken glasses is not Eddie fucking Kaspbrak falling apart under him and around him and clawing him up, _Jesus_ Richie’s gonna be playing that in his head forever and ever, he’s going to wear out the tape, it’s gonna be the last thing on the insides of his useless eyes.

_Congratulations, Richie Tozier, you have just had the first earth-shattering sex of your life and you didn’t even get your clothes off. What will you do next?_

_I’m going to Vegas._

Eddie said _You could have gone your whole life without._ There’s a world out there and he doesn’t know how close it is to this one where Mike and Ben had to drag him screaming out of Neibolt, instead of Bill carrying him out thinking he was dead. There’s a world where Richie threw his glasses in the quarry and sobbed rather than look at Eddie’s blood on them or taste Eddie’s blood in his mouth.

And instead he got that. This was, like, decades of waiting falling on his head. A rockslide hitting him in the skull, one stone at a time. No wonder he feels borderline concussed. When he got in the shower he found scratches so deep his skin went peeling away in curls from Eddie’s clean neat nails.

Holy _fucking_ shit.

_You could have gone your whole life and never._

Well he hadn’t, up until right then. Confused thoughts about women and men spin through his head—this is Richie’s new record for number of dicks in a room when orgasms are exchanged, applause all around, thank you, thank you. Even when he thinks of the woman he loves best in the world—in some alternate universe where Ben and Bill were both non-entities and Bev invited Richie into bed with her, he thinks he’d go? He thinks he’d go and he’d laugh about it and it would be a lot like the water fights they had when they were kids and it would be a good show, excellent work, what collaborative effort between Ms. Marsh the fashion designer and the comedian. Like, if she asked, not something that would occur to him on his own.

On the other end of the spectrum, the idea of having sex with Bill (sorry Bill) … feels kind of hilarious. Ben would be too much for Richie, Richie would have to nope right out of there, that is too much man for him, we salute you Bev, but Richie couldn’t deal with those sincere eyes. Mike… if Mike wanted to have sex with Richie, Richie could probably have sex with Mike? Richie’s spent a lot of his life having sex when it was offered and far less pursuing it than his various routines would lead an audience to believe.

Now if he ends up in Masturbators Anonymous it’s gonna be because of a hotel bathroom _in Utah_, praise Utah, suddenly the best state in the goddamn U.S., he’d like to formally apologize to all of the tiny effusive lesbians who lurk there for underestimating it.

So Richie has no idea if it’s because Eddie’s a guy or because Richie’s in love with him or because Richie has spent his life waiting for a tiny angry asthmatic to _fucking wreck him_, which is something he didn’t expect about himself but yeah, probably should have. That tracks. That’s in his line.

_You could have gone your whole life without._

Jesus Christ, is Eddie ever gonna let him touch him again? He held it together pretty well but Richie still got back from the shower to find him bright red and _fucking shaking_ and that’s why Richie’s wearing underwear right now, as if that horse hasn’t completely left the barn and driven across the continental United States to Los Angeles.

And Eddie is by turns demanding honesty from Richie and crashing face-first into that wall himself. Stan said to tell the truth.

Stan said _Hold on tight and never let them go._

Stan, that _fucking sanctimonious prick_ who had a wife and a whole life he liked a lot, said that _When you’re a Loser you have nothing to lose_. As if Richie doesn’t know. As if Richie doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to lose, as if he doesn’t know how it felt to spend—days, hours, he doesn’t know how long it was—getting _almost there, just this close_ and then Eddie’s blood and Eddie saying his name so sad. _Hold on tight. Never let them go._

Richie’s lucky to get this much. Lucky to get even another second of Eddie hissing and spitting at him like a cat, lucky to have Eddie flip him off in a service plaza, lucky to have Eddie smirking at him across a table, lucky, lucky, lucky. And Eddie is brave and tough and scared, and he’s spent his whole life with people sinking their claws into him and making him feel like he could never leave, he doesn’t want to be looked at, he doesn’t want to be seen, and Richie _can’t hold on tight_, he can’t crush Eddie to death under the weight of what he wants.

_Come to L.A. with me. Sleep on my couch. Sleep in my bed with me. _Shiver—_take what you want._

Richie has said _want_ and Richie has said _totally gay for you_ and Richie has said _I would say yes_ but Richie’s never said _Stay_. Richie’s never said _I love you._ Richie’s never said _just kiss me for the sake of kissing me._

Man, _fuck_ Stan, things were going so good for him that instead of hauling his ass back to Derry like the rest of them he saw what he had in his hand and he saw he couldn’t bear to lose it, and he thinks that gives him _some kind of wisdom?_ Some kind of right to demand promises from them? Some kind of knowledge beyond what the rest of them can achieve because they sacked up when it mattered and Stan looked at his life and his wife and his friends and he—

Everything electronic in the room dies.

Richie doesn’t realize they were even running until the total silence happens, so thick it seems to press on his eardrums.

Then everything boots back up, the television making a small noise and the lights of the alarm clock flicking back on and blinking _12:00_ at him.

Richie takes a deep breath, just about furious. If this is Stan Richie doesn’t know what he can do to fistfight a ghost but he’s gonna work it out because Eddie is asleep beside him in stupid pajamas and this is _his_, all right? This is _his_ and he’s not going to share it with any of them no matter how much he loves them, this moment _belongs to him_ and Richie’s going to take it because he came within literal inches of never having it, he’ll take whatever he can get, he’ll beg on his knees for crumbs if that’s what it takes.

_Nothing to lose_, Richie’s ass.

The power blinks out again.

Eddie wakes up, his breath hitching and body suddenly stiffening against Richie’s back, and not in a fun way. “’S happening?” he mumbles.

“Power outage,” Richie says, and he’s glad it’s his own voice coming out. “It’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

“Why’re you up?”

This happens, sometimes, before Richie has an appointment he definitely needs a good night’s rest for. His body’s chosen to interpret a morning after with Eddie Kaspbrak as something his whole existence hinges on, which, like, not wrong, just annoying.

The electronics whir back to life, a gentle hum that Richie will forget about as soon as his ears adjust to it.

“Oh, you know, the moon,” Richie answers.

He tries not to laugh when Eddie just says, “Okay,” and tucks his face back into Richie’s trapezius. Then after a moment Eddie mumbles something that is definitely “Fuck it” and unwinds an arm from his sheet prison and hooks his arm around Richie’s ribs.

“You did that already,” Richie says.

Eddie responds with a brush of eyelashes across Richie’s skin that makes Richie’s entire body go tense. “Go fuck yourself,” he says sleepily.

“I mean technically, did that too,” Richie points out.

Apparently Eddie’s either asleep or choosing to fake sleep. With one arm around Richie instead of just glued to him and batting his eyelashes.

That’s not a lump in Richie’s throat. He doesn’t know what it is, but that’s not it.

He must fall asleep again at some point, because next thing he knows Eddie’s phone alarm is going off and Eddie’s rolling away from him. Then Eddie’s frowning and saying, “Did the power go out in the night?”

Richie chooses not to mention that it might have been because he was antagonizing their dead friend.

“Twice.”

“Jeez.”

Now that he has space to do so, Richie puts his glasses on and then rolls over, scraping his hair back off his forehead and pressing his own arm to his face. That’s how he looks at Eddie, exaggerating his very real sleep deprivation and trying to get a sense of where Eddie’s at before he can say the wrong thing.

Which he will. But he’s just got to get a sense of it first.

Eddie stares at him, then slowly places both hands over his mouth and lowers himself back down onto the other pillow. Which he didn’t use last night, anyway. “Oh my god,” he says, muffled.

Well that was a little more overt emotion than Richie expected.

“I wasn’t that bad, Kaspbrak,” he says broadly, defensively.

“Please stop talking.”

“Has that ever worked for anyone talking to me in my entire life?”

Eddie closes his eyes and groans.

Richie, stuck midway between _let me kiss you_ and _so are we going to pretend this never happened?_ takes a third option and says, “So, Vegas.”

“No,” Eddie says immediately.

“Come on.”

“No.”

“_Oh_, come on.”

“No.” He sits up—_damn_ abs. “I’m taking a shower, you’re putting clothes on, we are getting in the car, we are not going to Vegas.”

“You literally just took a shower.”

Eddie looks over his shoulder. Richie has no trouble reading the _I can’t believe I slept with you_ in his face. “You take a shower when you wake up in the morning. It’s—why would you _not_ do that?”

“Because you _just_ took a shower.”

“_And_,” Eddie says, completely ignoring what Richie just said, “please tell me you’re taking your medication again.”

Richie feels like he’s swallowed an ice cube. “Are you putting an end to my liquor tour of the United States?”

Eddie pulls a face. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know, I’m pretty sure beer tours are a thing. Wine tours are definitely a thing. Are you asking me to go cold turkey for the rest of the trip?”

Eddie frowns slightly. “You’ve been driving the car. When have you been drinking?”

Richie idly scratches at his own fingernails. “I haven’t, but there’s been the option.”

“If a doctor prescribed you medication, you should take it.”

Richie closes his eyes and bites back about a million comments about Eddie, his doctor, his mother, and his fanny pack full of sugar pills. Then he sits up and flings himself forward, landing next to Eddie on the end of the bed all teenager-on-the-corded-phone-in-the-50s.

“I’ll go back on it,” he says, “if we go to Vegas.”

Eddie glares at him. “If I take you to Vegas, you’re gonna want to drink in Vegas. You built yourself a loophole.”

Sleeping under sheets instead of under the duvet wasn’t exactly warm, but Richie’s back is cold without either the mattress or a human space heater up against it; he can feel his body heat wicking away into the open air. This is why he never gets up in the mornings if he can help it.

“I can drink a little on it,” Richie says, which is true. Nothing like what he’s been putting away with the Losers, and nothing regularly that’ll tank his liver over time.

“Mm, for some reason I don’t trust you.”

Richie grins. “It’s the risk assessor. Look, I’ve got money to blow, you and I both have psychic powers and a ghost accountant, we have a moral duty to figure out if this works.”

Eddie laughs out loud. “A moral duty?”

“Absolutely. We have to report back to Mike, stat, and tell him if he can make big bucks gambling, now the Derry luck is off him.”

“Nine thousand dollars is not money to blow, Richie, jesus.”

“I didn’t remember I had it,” Richie says honestly. “Not until I needed it. It’s like I’ve had a sudden windfall to the tune of nine thousand dollars, and I need to take advantage of this while I can. When do you think you and I will be in Nevada next?”

“Hopefully? Never again.”

“No, I mean, I’m a comedian, if I ever get hired again I’m going to have to make it up to Reno at some point.”

Eddie is quiet for a moment. Then he turns all the way around to look at Richie and says, “What do you mean, ‘if you ever get hired again’?”

Oh.

“You were there,” Richie says. “For the trial.”

“Yeah.”

Richie feels his mouth moving without conscious effort, smiling and then dropping it and then smiling again. “Deaver decided to be open about the idea that I had a nervous breakdown onstage after discovering my dear friend Stan Urine had killed himself.”

Eddie gives him a weird look. “What?”

“I forgot my own _name_, Eddie.”

Eddie goes white. Like, lips too, just suddenly white. “What?” he asks in a much smaller voice.

That was not what Richie expected either.

But Eddie looks horrified and he’s whispering, “I knew it, I knew it gave us brain damage, I knew something happened—”

“It was just remembering,” Richie says. “I remembered _Trashmouth_, and it all came back.”

“You couldn’t remember your _name_?”

“I—” He bobs his head, trying to get back to the point. “I came out on the stage and introduced myself and I got through _Richie_ but didn’t actually make it to _Tozier_, it’s fine, it’s not that big a deal, but it was a massive fuck-up show wise. I—” He blinks once, trying to remember. “I think I limped through it, it was pathetic. God.”

“What do you mean, _you think_?”

Impatient, Richie presses his lips together. “I told you I’m on anti-anxiety meds, Eddie, what did you think they were for? If I was just a nervous person they’d have given me a one-a-day pill to chew, but they put me on Xanax first, and then the BuSpar.”

Eddie is blinking at him. “You have panic attacks?”

“I have anxiety,” Richie says, because they’re not the same thing.

“You—with the car—you have _stage fright_?”

“Thanks Eddie, this was a great heart to heart, you can go jump in the shower now,” Richie says.

“Your job makes you physically sick and you still do it?”

“Yeah, I finally found something to do where people will pay me to talk, I’m not gonna give up my ego for the sake of my quality of life.”

Eddie stares. Then he says, “Please take the meds.”

“Are you worried we’re gonna accidentally go to an improv night?”

“Worried—_Richie_.”

“We can’t do this right now,” Richie says.

Eddie blinks once and then gets up. “You’re right,” he says, which might be an Eddie Kaspbrak first.

Richie lets his eyebrows shoot up. “Sorry, I don’t understand those words when they come out of your mouth.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie invites him. “I’m taking a shower.”

“Fine. I’m gonna call Mike. Get him on my side about Vegas.”

Richie does call Mike while Eddie’s in the shower. He was mostly joking about the Vegas thing, though if he can get Mike to agree that it’s an important experiment to conduct he’s gonna put Mike on speakerphone and make Eddie listen.

Mike picks up, sounding surprisingly chipper for this early in the morning. Then again there’s a time zone difference in Florida, right? “Hello?”

Richie runs his tongue over his teeth and then says in his British accent, “Hello, I’m looking for a Mr. Michael Hanlon?”

A beat.

Then Mike says, “You know I have caller ID, right, Richie?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have a very important research question and only a former small-town librarian can help me with it.”

“Oh really?”

Richie drops the voice. “Yeah, you think Eddie and I can make money gambling?”

Another beat. Then Mike says, sounding genuinely interested, “Huh.”

“Oh shit, do you think so?”

“Man, you think I know how any of this works? You fucking try it, why not? We’re all just Peter-Pan-ing it around here.”

“See if you can get someone to pay you to guess the next song on the radio.”

“If Stan’s there? It’s gonna be Spandau Ballet. Spandau Ballet all the way, for ten hours.”

“_Shit_, man. You sure you’re not just working through some stuff?”

“I am definitely working through some stuff, but not that stuff,” Richie says. He’s not actually sure what kind of stuff would qualify for Spandau Ballet, but he’s not eager to acquire those kinds of problems. “Anyway, you made it to Florida, right?”

“Yeah, days ago, Richie, thanks for noticing.”

“Aw, man, I don’t know if you’re out painting the town red or not. You got all psyched about a museum.”

“…Do you mean the Kennedy Space Center?”

Immediately Richie puts on JFK. “I mean, they’re all space museums to me, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess they are,” Mike concedes.

“So how’s it feel? Living your childhood dream.”

There’s another beat of silence, and then Mike chuckles into the phone. When he speaks, Richie can hear the smile in his voice. “Man, I went on this tour. Got in basically a glorified golf cart and drove out into this field and looked at all this long green sea grass, this like, powder green grass. Gators in the distance. It was like… The sun, it was a whole ’nother world.”

“Yeah? Everything you hoped it would be?”

“God, I couldn’t even have expected. It’s just warm, man. The whole place is warm. Derry got hot in the summer, we had droughts, but like, this is… Even when it was hot, it was cold. And this is so _bright_.”

“And any moment an alligator could just chomp the shit out of you.”

“Which is different from Derry in what way, exactly?”

“The facepaint.”

“Oh, right, gotcha.” Mike laughs.

They can laugh about it now. Something in Richie’s chest resists that, curling up and shoving against it, saying _you can’t_, saying _people died_. Everything else that Richie is manages to shove it back down.

“How about you?” Mike asks.

“What about me?”

“Living your childhood dream.”

Richie has a concentrated moment of _fear_ that bursts out of nowhere, somewhere in conjunction with the story about the guy Pennywise took out of the Kenduskeag.

Mike waits a moment and then says, “Didn’t you always want to be a comedian, man?”

“Oh,” Richie says, and then laughs. “No, I wanted to be a ventriloquist. Thank god I didn’t end up doing that, now I’ve been a puppet I don’t think I could stand it, and I’m too old to start over with a whole new career.”

“Eh, you land on your feet. Even without the divine intervention—you land on your feet.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mike says easily.

Richie rolls over on the bed and stares up at the ceiling, his head hanging off the edge so that when he speaks again his voice sounds sick and mottled. “Hey, Mike.”

“Yeah?”

“You know how I killed a guy for you?”

“Yes, I was there, Richie.”

“Where do I get off, landing on my feet after that?”

“Probably right next to me. Having the audacity to not get lynched in Derry.”

Richie winces. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, I know.”

“I know that you now owe me a life debt and everything, but…” He’s not sure what he wants to say next.

“Huh?” Mike says kindly.

“We lied. So much. About Stan, and about why we were there, and… about my fucking joke right after, do you remember I did that? I barely remember I did that.”

“We were both under a little stress.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Yeah.”

“In the interest of not going to Juniper Hill ourselves.”

“Yeah. It’s just that—_Stan_ and everything.”

“What about it?”

“His _tell the truth_. I don’t know.” He closes his eyes. “You think you can use up your whole quota of lying in your life? You think that you can ever just drop that all and say _this far and no farther_, and just not give a fuck about anything for the rest of your life? Don’t you think we’ve earned a little of that by now?”

Mike is quiet for a moment. Richie feels stupid in the aftermath, not even close to knowing what his point was, having gone from the micro-scale to the cosmic before nine in the goddamned morning.

Then Mike says, “You can tell me anything, Richie.”

Richie’s brain goes quiet for just a heartbeat.

Then _he knows_ roars up from inside him.

And then quiet again.

“I’d’a died without you,” Mike says. “Not just back in the library—thirty years ago. You remember that fight? You remember getting up there with your big honking glasses and screaming _Rock War_ like you were in_ 300_, and getting hit right in the face? That coulda killed you too.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Yeah, I remember that.” He suspects he shouldn’t, considering the size of the rock he got hit with, he absolutely had an untreated concussion from that; but he can remember Eddie, smaller than all of them, picking out into the water for bigger and better rocks and making a target of himself.

“You talk to me about whatever you feel like for the rest of your life, you mouthy asshole,” Mike says. “I’ma tell you when it’s stupid, but you don’t apologize to me for a damn thing ever again.”

Richie’s stomach goes _Don’t say it_ right as his mouth says, “Good, because I couldn’t sleep last night and I did the math and out of the whole group, I think you’d be the best candidate for a friend with benefits.”

Silence.

Then Mike is laughing. “Oh, your white ass should be so lucky!” he just about crows.

“Oh, _lucky, huh_?” Richie repeats. “You leave anyone behind in Derry, Mike? You hiding any surprises behind—I can’t get through it, you’re six foot four, you’re all out there, how the fuck did I even qualify for this club? I don’t meet the minimum appearance guidelines. Yesterday Eddie told me I look like I robbed a secondhand store that accepts only Hawaiian shirts.”

Mike snorts. “Unless you count a coworker I drunkenly propositioned every Christmas party and we both pretended I wasn’t serious? No, nobody behind in Derry.”

“Jesus, Mike. I hear you steal from Native Americans too.”

“Oh my god, Bill took that totally out of context.”

The water shuts off in the shower.

“What is the deal with the Hawaiian shirts, though?”

“If it ain’t broke…”

“Oh, it’s broke, it’s definitely broke, man.”

“Can’t hear you, bad reception from Florida, _lalalalala_.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. Where are you anyway?”

“Whipup, Utah.”

“Jesus, what the hell happens there?”

Mike has no idea and Richie can absolutely never tell him. “According to their vibrant display of tourism pamphlets? You’d be surprised.”

“Wow. Well, are you looking forward to getting back to Los Angeles?”

Richie tilts his head all the way back to look at the closed bathroom door.

“Yes and no,” he says. “Thought maybe I’d stay here in this hotel forever.”

“That’s a life choice you could make.”

“Become a whippersnapper.”

“Oh Jesus, tell me they don’t call themselves that.”

“I do, and if I become one of them, it will technically be what at least one of us calls ourselves.”

“Uh, no. Just gonna veto that one right now. How’s Eddie?”

Richie’s lips twitch. “Good. He’s good.” _Fucking writhing under him. _“He touched a hotel bedspread yesterday and he’s still in the shower.”

“Is that Mike?” Eddie asks through the door, which makes Richie _immediately_ anxious about the friends with benefits comment.

“Yeah.”

“Tell him I said hi.”

“Eddie says hi,” Richie says obediently.

“Well hi, Eddie.”

“Mike says we should go to Vegas.”

“He does not,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, I said, _why not_, I didn’t say, _yes, go for it, full speed ahead,”_ Mike says.

“He says 'yes, go for it, full speed ahead,'” Richie says in his best Mike Hanlon.

Mike breaks down laughing at the impression.

Eddie says, “You’re a fucking liar, Tozier.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees in his own voice. “Mike, I gotta go, if I don’t brush my teeth for the required eighteen minutes Eddie doesn’t let me in the car.”

“Well we can’t have that. Love you, Rich.”

“Love you too, Micycle.”

When Eddie comes out of the bathroom, fully dressed and combed and brushed and polished, Richie is still sprawled upside-down on the bed in his boxers, not even bothering to look like anything less than a human dumpster fire.

“I’ll take the pill,” he tells Eddie.

“Good,” Eddie replies. “We’re still not going to Vegas.”

They stop for gas and to stretch their legs.

Eddie walks into the station and stares for a solid five seconds at a display of condoms.

“Nope,” he says out loud, and walks quickly away.

Eddie still has road rage.

Richie has spent over twenty-four cumulative hours in a car with him, listening to him curse out other drivers and assign them random names. Staring absently at the back of a car refusing either to get back in the right lane or to maintain a consistent speed to allow Eddie to pass it, he finally makes the connection between the license plate reading LVZ and Eddie’s “GET OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY LAVERNE.”

Richie sits up in his seat.

Eddie seems not to notice. It does not impede his next, “And if someone could let me out of the caravan from hell—_no no no don’t let the fucking Ford over, Pavel, you utter moron_.”

Richie stares at the license plate in front of them and reads PAV.

“Oh my god,” he says.

Eddie is still mad about the Ford. “I know, right? Is it just me?”

“You’re reading their license plates,” Richie says. “You did Claire the other day—you’re reading their license plates, oh my god, that is funnier than fucking anything I’ve said on stage.”

Eddie, keeping his eyes on the road in what looks like soul-deep longing for his exit, scrunches up his face incredulously. “What, like that’s hard?”

Richie clutches his chest and leans forward into the feeling of being stabbed. “Oh my _god_.”

“Get up, if those _idiots_ crash into us and you’re sitting like that you’re going to die.”

Richie’s in love. This is Richie in love. This is what it feels like, active instead of passive--to be in love, to love, state of being versus state of feeling.

He throws himself all the way back in his seat, puts his arm up on the crumpled door, and just _watches_.

At top volume Eddie addresses a car with a license plate including the letters _JCY_ as _Juicy_ and Richie laughs until he cries.

Eddie is not stupid.

Unable to look at Richie without blushing right now, yes; stupid, no. He can feel Richie’s eyes on him from the passenger seat and watches the rhythm of his fidgeting, his head bobbing as he talks, the cheerful drumming along to imaginary music—this is Richie _happy_. Eddie did pretty much nothing and Richie is—_sprawled_, Eddie thought Richie sprawled _before_ but now he sees that Richie had hitherto-unsuspected reserves of self-restraint that he has now tossed out the window.

Richie got up from lounging across the hotel bed, looking like some _very niche_ centerfold, and as he bent to get clothes out of his bag Eddie spotted the scratches on Richie’s hip and lower back.

“Holy shit,” he blurted.

Richie straightened—_Jesus_ there’s a lot of him, what is that?—and looked down at himself. “Yeah, you trashed the trashmouth,” he said matter-of-factly. Didn’t even smirk at Eddie over it.

The sudden clench and flip in Eddie’s gut feels a lot like nausea, if there was a nausea equivalent to being unable to keep from prodding a loose tooth with the tip of his tongue. Eddie will get focused back on the road and then out of nowhere he’ll hear _Mm, Eddie_ and his shoulders will ratchet back up to his ears and his face will flush and his heart will do something deeply unnerving and Eddie _feels_ sick, but he’s not sick.

It’s not even what he thought _being_ sick would feel like. Even the hint of a scratchy throat, a sniffle, a buzz in the back of his skull was intolerable, had to be eliminated before it got worse.

This is… weird. Weird and uncomfortable but not bad.

The Derry experience and after has been just a constant stream of _you can do this and live_. Eddie doesn’t know what to do with that. Aside from the obvious—_pack up your stuff and leave your wife and attend a murder trial and hook up with America’s worst comedian in a hotel bathroom in Utah._

God. That’s it now, isn’t it? This is Eddie's life. Uncharted territory.

Richie tries to talk him into getting something like eighty-percent whipped cream from the rest area Starbucks when they stop for lunch.

“Oh my god, you don’t even like coffee, you just like sugar and caffeine and bad-for-you, buy the mocha-choca-bullshit and suck it up, life is too short to drink coffee you don’t even like,” he groans.

Eddie steals a handful of his fries. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Buy your own fries while you’re at it!”

Which is how Richie ends up snidely sucking down a frappucino in the passenger seat of the car and then coughing and making a face and saying, “Oh my god, it tastes like a unicorn just fucked my throat.”

“JESUS CHRIST RICHIE.”

Right around St. George Richie suggests they swap and he drive a leg.

“No,” Eddie says.

Richie looks at him, hands spread and incredulous.

“No, because we’re about to go into Arizona, and after that we’re going to Nevada, and _we are still not going to Vegas_.”

“Eds, I got my whole life back.” Richie gestures around at the interior of the car. “This is it. This is the high point. You know what the odds of us all coming out of this were? Neither do I. But I bet they fucking sucked. I have the luck of my life right now, and I have nine thousand dollars earmarked for literally nothing else, and I have _magic powers_. You have the magic power of _always being right about where things are_, are you telling me you can’t do Three Card Monte? Are you telling me you can’t tell where a roulette wheel is going to land? Come on, this is gonna work!”

It does not work.

Richie says, “Come on, Stan,” and tries one slot machine.

Three green dollar signs roll into sequence and an alarm goes off over Richie’s head.

“Oh no,” Richie says.

He has just won one thousand six hundred dollars.

And he knows this feeling.

He finds Eddie, shoves all his coins into Eddie’s hands, and says, “Cash those out, I have to go wait in the car.”

Eddie’s mouth pops open. “What did you do?”

“I gotta go.” He gives Eddie a solicitous smile, sticks his hand in Eddie’s pocket, and fishes out the car keys. Eddie jumps and looks uncomfortable but otherwise doesn’t cause a fight.

By the time Eddie comes back out, Richie has clawed his way into the trunk, ransacked his whole suitcase, and taken his second buspirone of the day. Leaving his bag open and spread out in the trunk, Richie is now sitting in the passenger seat with his water bottle pressed to his neck, his eyes closed.

He hears Eddie open the door. At least, he hopes it’s Eddie. Maybe he’s about to be carjacked.

“What the fuck was that?” Eddie asks, and then, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Richie says without opening his eyes. He gropes around for the keys, find them, and holds them out to Eddie with his left hand. Damn drugs take weeks to become effective, when he goes off them. He misses his fucking Xanax.

Eddie lifts the keys out of his hand with a jingle. “Did you take—?”

“Yep,” Richie says. The bottle’s rattling around his footwell somewhere.

“Is it gonna help?”

“No idea,” Richie replies.

He hears Eddie draw in a real wind tunnel of a breath and then steady himself. “Okay,” he says.

It’s literally three P.M.

They get back on the road.

Eddie wakes Richie up when he takes the exit to I-10.

“Okay, I need your actual address,” he says.

Richie’s eyes open and then squint. He holds up his hand in the direction of the windshield, blocking the light.

“You can’t divine it based on the minerals in my body or something?”

Eddie has no idea what that means. “No. Do you have a headache?”

“Yep.”

“Do you want to take something for that?”

“Nah, it doesn’t go away,” Richie says. He leans over and puts his address in the GPS. Eddie allows himself three glances at the overhead map of the route and then thinks he’s got it. Richie sits back in his seat with his hand over his eyes and after a certain point says, “Right, parking,” and explains where Eddie’s supposed to park his car where it won’t get stolen outside Richie’s apartment.

This does not make Eddie feel better about the relative safety of Richie’s apartment.

It’s not that bad, actually. There’s a block that’s nothing but big apartment buildings, four after another, stacked on top of a grocery store and a coffee shop and a sushi restaurant. Richie sits up and gives delayed directions to the parking lot behind the last building on the row, then curses and admits he has to go into his bag for his keys.

“You have to go into your bag so that you actually take your bag inside like a human being after a trip, Richie, you can’t just leave—_did you leave my clothes just out in the trunk?_”

He delivers his riposte in a thready voice. “Oh, you mean your jizz-stained underwear?” Richie clucks his tongue as Eddie blushes. “Yeah, guess I did, Kaspbrak, what about that, huh?”

“You—you’re—_ugh_ you’re disgusting.”

“Mmm, but it’s not _my_ jizz, is it?”

Eddie, mind wiped almost blank between exhaustion and something like sheer horror, can’t say anything other than “Fuck you!”

Richie just grins.

His keyfob has some kind of electronic impulse in it that he taps without error on the panel to unlock the door. Eddie doesn’t know why he can’t do that with hotel keycards, but whatever. Richie, who grabbed one of Eddie’s suitcases without even thinking about it, walks without hesitation past a wall of mailboxes and through a set of glass doors into a very modern lobby.

The concierge at the desk looks up. “Mr. Tozier?”

Richie doesn’t even look around. “Hi yes it’s me, been a while, huh? Anyway I’m going up to promptly enter a vegetative state, this is my nurse, he’s trained in euthanasia.” He walks across the lobby toward a quartet of elevators and begins stabbing the _up_ button.

Eddie, wide-eyed, offers the concierge an apologetic grimace and follows Richie.

In the hallway before actually getting into the apartment, Richie pauses with his keys in hand and says, “Okay, I haven’t been home in I literally cannot remember how long, and I don’t remember what it looks like, but I know me, and I know that seeing this room is going to send you into hysterics, but I am too goddamn tired to do the surprise-one-night-stand emergency cleanup while you stand in the doorway with your hands over your eyes—”

“For fuck’s sake, Richie, open the goddamn door,” Eddie says.

“—so just please remember I had a well-documented breakdown on film right before I left home, and if you’re going to actually kill me, just make it quick,” Richie finishes, and opens the goddamn door. He turns on the lights.

It is not as bad as Eddie expected.

It’s small. The front door opens straight into Richie’s kitchen, and Richie actually owns a dishwasher for one, but there are pots and pans stacked on the stovetop. It could use a vacuum. Immediately beyond that Eddie sees the living room, the blinds pulled down over the windows, and an aggressively pink couch.

“What the fuck is that?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah, fucking told you, didn’t I?” Richie pitches his voice high and nasal. “_Richie, where have you been?”_

Eddie realizes belatedly that he’s doing a voice for the couch.

“Oh my god.”

Richie drags the suitcases out of the way of the door, just kind of leaning them up against the kitchen counter. He tucks his hands into his jacket pocket. “Yeah, not to situate you between a rock and a hard place or a comedian and an anti-sexual couch, but you don’t actually have to sleep with me and I’m not gonna make you sleep on that, so if—” Richie scrunches up his face like he’s smelled something, like possibly the dishes stacked on the stove. “—I think I just tried to offer you my bed but I don’t really know where I’m going with that so I’d like to bail, please.”

“Shut,” Eddie says slowly, “up.”

Surprisingly, it works. Richie is really Not Well.

Eddie steers Richie back into the kitchen counter much like a suitcase and starts ransacking his cabinets looking for glasses. There is a bright yellow plastic Coca-Cola cup in one for god only knows what reason, but it is the one thing in this kitchen Eddie is reasonably sure is clean.

“Is your water okay?”

“Perfectly friendly. Never threatened me from the drain or anything,” Richie says.

Eddie rolls his eyes and fills up the cup with water, then hands it to Richie. “Drink,” he says.

Richie’s eyebrows go up but he brings the cup to his mouth.

Eddie throws the toiletry bag on the counter—_crumbs_, he observes immediately, and tries to think about anything else—and fishes out the Advil. He pulls up drugs.com on his phone and looks at the list of interactions.

“You’re not supposed to have ibuprofen?” he realizes, his voice getting shrill in his surprise.

“I’m not supposed to have alcohol, grapefruit, or Xanax, if there are more rules either I wasn’t listening or they didn’t tell me,” Richie says sourly.

Eddie clicks on the interaction entry but the website then tells him no interactions were found. He shakes two pills out into his palm and holds them out to Richie.

“I told you they’re not gonna help—”

“Try,” Eddie says.

Richie’s mouth pulls to the side and he takes the pills, throwing them back like he would a shot and then chugging his water. He lowers the cup with a wet _ah_ sound and then says, “Well, fuck my experience, Dr. Kaspbrak—”

Eddie shushes him. “Your brain lies to you.”

Richie blinks twice and then pulls a parody of broad grin. “Well I knew that.”

“With the headache, Richie, your brain tries to talk you out of treating it.” He pokes Richie in the side.

Richie looks down at his outstretched finger.

“I believe they’re gonna help,” Eddie says.

Richie keeps staring for one more second and then raises his head again. He blinks and then tries the affected smile again. “Well if you’re gonna work your magic on me, who am I to pass that up?”

“What happened in Vegas?”

“It stayed in Vegas, of course.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, but there’s no heat in it. “Go lie down.”

“It’s like _seven_.”

“You’re old.”

Richie grins and whistles slightly. “Tell me how you really feel, Eds.” He turns away. “So I guess I’m gonna leave you unsupervised… in my apartment… If you have to get rid of everything, if you have to kill it with fire, just try not to burn the building down.” He bypasses the first door on the left, goes to the second, and vanishes into another cave of a room. The door clicks gently behind him.

Eddie has a moment to consider Richie’s empty apartment, the suitcases still taking up space in the kitchen, and the blinds drawn over the windows. Then he gives up and goes over to the Pepto-pink couch. He tries to sit down on it and the springs inside it scream. He jumps back up.

“Goddamn it, Richie,” he mutters.

He doesn’t know what to do at first and he picks up his phone more out of nervous habit than anything else, and then he remembers that he should probably text the Losers to tell them they made it to L.A. without overturning the car or being chased by space demons or anything. He opens up the group text—he’s had his phone muted all day, partially out of fear that Myra will find her way around the blocked number and partially because he was already distracted enough—and sees a quartet of messages.

Bill: _Try not to kill him, Eddie._

Mike: _18 mins huh?_

Ben: _Be safe!_

Bev just sent a yellow heart emoji.

Eddie frowns, remembers Richie taking the picture in the car yesterday, and immediately wonders if he’s about to scroll up into an actual dick pic.

It’s not.

It’s a photo of Eddie.

Well, of both of them. Richie’s in the foreground holding the phone pressed up against the window and leaning back toward the driver’s seat, smiling, and Eddie appears over his shoulder and is visibly in the middle of shouting at another driver. Like, his mouth is open and his teeth are bared and everything. It is one of the worst pictures of Eddie ever taken.

The caption is: _ROADMAN._

Richie looks delighted. Not that fake or performative delight or the _look at me I’m so happy_ face, but he looks startled and a little afraid for his life and he’s smiling down the length of his whole arm into the camera. His eyes are big and he’s not even showing any teeth in his smile; he looks like he can’t believe what’s happening.

Basically exactly how he looked when Eddie leapt on him after the deadlights and thought for one confused, relieved, spinning moment that Richie was going to kiss him.

Eddie stares at it until the automatic timer on his screen turns the image dark, and then he leans forward and puts his head between his knees.

Listen, listen, everyone his whole life has said things to Eddie and about Eddie and behind Eddie’s back and they’ve thought things about Eddie and they’ve kept their mouths shut or they’ve brayed laughter at him. Eddie can’t walk down the street without his ears itching, without turning his head to look, without wondering and fearing what people say at once. He’s never wanted anyone to be right about him ever, whether he was delicate or queer or baby-faced or excitable or _fucking fag_ or—

Until Richie said, _You’re braver than you think you are_.

He sits up and then all the way back on the insult to couches everywhere. He puts a hand over his face and blinks several times, until the filmy sensation in his eyes goes away.

_How many monsters have you fought and won, Eddie Kaspbrak?_

His head snaps up and he looks around, but he’s alone in the room.

Then he drags a hand over his face, palm smearing across the scar on his cheek and dragging the corner of his mouth down. He can absolutely kill Richie Tozier’s apartment before Richie realizes what’s going on.

It’s a good forty minutes before he hears Richie call through the door, “You better not be cleaning out there!”

Eddie slams the dishwasher shut. “You’re a biohazard!” He tugs the lever and runs it; anything that melts during the heated start he’s going to make Richie replace anyway, nine thousand dollars, seriously.

Richie opens the bedroom door slowly, like he thinks he’s gonna spook Eddie. Then he looks around the apartment and says, “Jesus.”

It’s not clean, but everything is thrown into corners, Eddie’s suitcase is open, the washing machine and dishwasher are both running, and the pots and pans that were on the stove are now soaking on the sink in scalding water.

Richie takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. “You didn’t—you don’t have to—I can get off my ass and—”

“Buy me dinner, Richie,” Eddie says. He didn’t expect the way saying it would make his heart flutter, but it does.

Richie groans and jams his glasses back onto his face. “If I try to feed you raw fish, will you cry? Because I’m pretty sure the grocery store’s closed.”

“Oh jesus, Richie, I’m from New York, you think I’ve never had sushi?”

Richie calls down to the sushi restaurant and, with his hand over his eyes, sputters out an incoherent order for pick-up. Later he walks down and comes back up with a big plastic tote bag full of containers. “So I had to apologize to Jocelin downstairs, he thought you might have me at gunpoint or something.”

Eddie guesses that Jocelin is the concierge. “No, he didn’t.”

“He did. Very scary man from New York in Gucci loafers.”

“They’re—” Eddie huffs. “They’re not fucking Gucci.”

Watching Richie struggle to hold chopsticks correctly is also pretty funny. He keeps stretching out his whole hand, looking at it like he’s never seen it before, and then touching his pinkie finger to his thumb, like he’s trying to reassert control of his limbs. He’s not even taking Stan for a ride-along right now, he’s just struggling.

“I got no idea what any of this is,” Richie says apologetically.

Eddie realizes he means the sushi and not the chopsticks, and then wrinkles his nose. “That’s okay, I can only eat it if I don’t know what’s in it.”

“Yeah, that seems a little more in your line.”

“Fish is very healthy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So are vegetables.”

Richie half-sings, _“Never touched a frying pan,”_ doing a passable Barenaked Ladies.

“By the way if all the finish comes off your frying pan you’re going to have to buy a new one, I don’t know if I can sterilize it without destroying it, I have to buy chlorine tablets tomorrow.”

“You—you don’t have to buy chlorine tablets. Unless you’re going to try to poison me with them in my own home, you don’t have to buy chlorine tablets.”

Eddie is perched on the arm of the pink couch like a bird, because the armrest is actually the most comfortable part of this particular furniture abomination. Richie is sitting on the floor, shins too long for his knees to fit under the coffee table, the powered-off television to his back.

“You need chlorine tablets to sterilize your dishes, they have to reach a certain PH level.”

“You—” Richie presses his knuckles to his mouth. “I signed up for this, didn’t I? I actually signed up for this.” He yanks his knees in a little tighter to his body. “I’m too old for this.”

“Buy a grown-up couch.”

“Shh, she’ll hear you.”

“She?”

“She’s definitely a real maiden aunt of a couch. You heard the springs?”

“Yeah, I heard the springs, Richie, they heard the springs in _New Zealand_. Gambling?”

Richie’s brow furrows in confusion for a second and then smooths out as he catches up. His eyebrows lift and fall and he tucks his left arm tight across his body, like he’s reaching for pockets that aren’t there. “Mm. Addictive personality.”

“You? No. Shocker,” Eddie drawls.

“Me? Impulse control? Delayed gratification? Huh?”

Before he can overthink it, Eddie flicks his eyes up toward the ceiling and tilts his head from side to side, _so so_. “Eh, delayed…?”

From Richie’s long pause, Eddie’s pretty sure the joke would have been completely opaque if it weren’t for the way he immediately went bright red when he said it.

There’s the click of Richie dropping his chopsticks on the table.

“Holy shit, Eddie Kaspbrak, was that a dirty joke?”

“No,” Eddie says flatly. “You’re sick. Eat your fish.” He gives him a stern look.

“I think it was, I think you’re lying to me right now, Eds, god you’re so—” Richie lowers his head and stuffs what looks like three pieces of sushi into his mouth.

Eddie’s a little afraid to find out what he’s _so_. “Don’t call me that. How’s your head?”

Around a frankly unacceptable quantity of raw fish and rice, Richie makes vaguely affirmative noises and bobs his head demonstratively.

Eddie rolls his eyes.

The rest of the sushi goes into the fridge, which is just as well because Eddie had to throw out all the molding containers in there, and the milk, and the sticks of butter that had absorbed the smell. He’s been here like three hours and he’s already intimately familiar with the building’s trash chute, because he couldn’t leave the full garbage bags in the kitchen for one more night. When the washing machine beeped Richie got up off the floor with only a little staggering because of his stiff knees and threw the laundry in the dryer.

The closer and closer it gets to an actual adult bedtime, the more aware Eddie becomes of his own thumping heart.

Richie is getting paler.

“Okay like I said you’re not obligated to sleep in my bed or anything, I was drunk when I asked and you were drunk and I think just about asleep when you agreed, so that’s not binding under any legal standards—”

“You’re boring me,” Eddie says.

Richie inexplicably turns bright red, which makes Eddie buckle over with nervous laughter.

“The fuck was that?” Eddie demands.

Richie just shakes his head vigorously and says, “Secondly, I was not exactly expecting to have Eddie Kaspbrak in my bed when I came back, and I continue to live like an actual bear, minus the whole shoving a pinecone—”

“Don’t ever tell me what bears do with pinecones.” Eddie thinks it’s too late for that, he's afraid he understands, but he’s going to pretend he doesn't know that.

Richie’s lips press together and he shakes a little as he tries to talk through his laughter. “—so like, I threw my shit into the closet, but I wouldn’t say it’s a good idea to actually look around in there.”

“Oh god, have you ever actually washed your sheets?”

Richie rolls his eyes. “Yes, but in my defense my whole perception of time just got fucked by what might have been an Old God, so I can’t tell you when, through no fault of my own.”

“Oh of _course_ it’s through no fault of your own.”

“Yeah, come on, keep up.”

“What the fuck do you mean, you didn’t expect _Eddie Kaspbrak_, why are you full-naming me?”

The little color that had relaxed out of Richie’s face floods back in and he shakes his head. “What the fuck do I ever mean?” he asks, which is not an answer. “Matter of fact, don’t turn on the light in there.”

Eddie gets up from the barstool he occupied to watch Richie Tozier Do A Chore in and dives around him for the bedroom door.

“No!” Richie lunges after him.

Eddie gets the door open and hands immediately close over his eyes. “Richie.”

“Nope,” Richie says, popping the _p_.

“You are—” Eddie blindly moves one step forward and Richie steps with him. “—the single most annoying human being—”

“Yeah, watch your step,” Richie says, and overturns Eddie onto the bed.

“Damn it, Richie.”

It’s soft.

Eddie’s instinctive surprise and recoil have to fight with the sudden influx of sensation, the _oh, this isn’t that bad_ and the smell of _Richie_, his hair and skin and the detergent he uses. In the space between Richie’s hands vanishing and the light from the other room sliding away as the door shuts, Eddie sees that Richie’s sheets are navy.

“You,” Eddie says into the dark.

“Mm-hmm,” Richie agrees.

“I—teeth—” Eddie moves one arm as if to get up.

“Mm, you can go brush your teeth, but if you do, you’re sleeping on the couch.”

“I am fucking not,” Eddie says.

He’s still up on his knees when Richie crashes onto the other side of the mattress, landing with all the grace and delicacy of a whale breaching. Eddie grabs onto the comforter like the bed has suddenly become a trampoline.

“Do you wanna risk it?” Richie asks casually from the head of the bed. Eddie can hear him moving and then, moments later, the sound of fabric hitting the wall.

“What—you—_damn it, Richie_.”

He’s glad it’s dark. Richie can’t see him. It makes him feel a little bit better about the compass swirling around uselessly in his head, trying to work out which way to go.

Richie flops back down on the mattress. Some kind of echolocation gives Eddie a general sense of where the pillows are.

“Are you—are you_ naked_?” Eddie demands, his heart in his ears.

Richie’s voice drips sarcasm. “Yeah, Eddie, I have no sense of—” He drops it. “No, man, this is exactly how we’ve slept literally every other time before, and it’s not like being fully-dressed _stopped you_ last night.”

So Richie’s in boxers. Like that knowledge is gonna do anything except make him hyperattuned to any heat all Richie’s skin might be throwing off on the other side of the bed all night.

Eddie’s face burns. He’s getting real tired of that. “Fuck off.”

“I don’t have any ideas.” There’s a pause. “Well, no, I always have ideas, but I’m not gonna start anything, relax.”

The burn intensifies across Eddie’s cheekbones, and somewhere deep in his ribcage.

“Why?” he hears himself say.

Richie seems speechless for a moment.

“Because this is literally the only bed? Because if I piss you off neither of us wants to sleep on the crime against humanity out there?”

“Did you—did I _look_ pissed off last night? Do you think I’m just—”

“Yeah, you kinda did, Eddie. Don’t get me wrong, totally works for you, but—”

Eddie flails around with his left arm and comes up with something that might be a pillow. He bashes in the general direction of where he thinks Richie might be, misses, tries again, and hits.

“Do you think I’m just terrified?” he demands. “Do you think I’m just some scared shitless kid? _Oh no, Eddie’s been in the closet for forty-one goddamn years, if he sees an ankle he’ll probably pass out_—fuck you, Trashmouth, you’re not scary, your dick is not scary, your shitheap apartment is not scary, your bed is not scary, _fuck_.”

Richie twisted out of the way after Eddie hit him the first time—god this is so much better than a twin bed in Ben’s guest room—and is now a vague shape lying contorted at an angle in the dark. Eddie can see the paleness of his face and shoulders but not much else.

“You sure?” Richie’s voice asks, calm and quiet. “Not scary at all?”

Eddie swings for him with the pillow again. _“Fuck you, Trashmouth.”_

Somehow Richie catches his arm in the dark. Gently, carefully, he disengages the pillow from Eddie’s hand.

“Because it would be okay,” he says. “If it was. I thought we agreed to go with regular scary next time.”

With Richie’s hand across his wrist, Eddie’s not exactly held frozen, but he can feel how hard he’s breathing after his little tirade. Little switches are flicking in his nervous system, dials winding and cylinders compressing, trying to work out their marching orders. The air in Eddie’s lungs curls up and aches in his chest, unsatisfying.

“Turn around,” Eddie says, his voice much quieter. “Don’t look.”

Richie doesn’t protest that he can’t see anything in this dark room, but he lets Eddie go. Eddie hears and feels him shift, the displacement in the mattress and in the air, as he turns his back.

Eddie turns away on the bed too, kicking off his shoes and letting them thud on the floor, getting his ankles up within reach so he can pry off his socks and throwing them somewhere to worry about in the morning. Not now. He presses his lips together, undoes the buttons on his shirt, and throws it over his head too. The undershirt goes with it, carried by static cling and Eddie’s carelessness.

There is no sound from Richie, but the silence on the other side of the room is almost unbearable.

Eddie takes a deep breath, leans back, and unbuttons and unzips his pants. He slides those off his legs and drops them over the side of the bed. Then he feels around for the edge of the comforter and sweeps it up over himself, trying not to feel like he’s hiding but absolutely diving beneath it. He rolls back onto his left side and lets his head loll in the space where the pillow would be if Eddie hadn’t abused that particular object.

“Okay,” he whispers.

Richie doesn’t turn around at first—Eddie can see his shoulders and back clearly now, in the blue-gray suggestion of color as his eyes adjust—and then he gets up, pulls his side of the comforter down, and slides into the bed as well. He’s breathing fast. If Eddie were breathing that fast he’d assume he was having an asthma attack, and…

Richie lays flat on his back, then seems to remember the other pillow and fumbles to hand it back to Eddie. Eddie reaches his hand out from under the comforter and jams it under his head without caring much. He can see the angle of Richie’s nose in the dark. After a moment Richie takes his glasses off with a creak of plastic. They clink as they land on the bedside table. He lays back down and does not move.

“Richie,” Eddie says.

Richie covers his face with both hands in the dark and mumbles, sounding on the verge of frantic, “Fuck, Eddie, you know I’m in love with you, it’s just—”

Eddie reaches out, grabs his wrist, and pulls to try to get him to face him. “Richie.”

Richie lets himself be tugged into place, his hands still over his mouth and his eyes very dark.

Eddie pries one hand away. “It’s okay,” he says.

But Richie Tozier can’t sit with tension. He gets out, voice crushed like there’s something in his throat and tending upward toward plaintive, “Please just kiss me, I need—”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and kisses him.

Richie’s hands drop at once and instead fit around the back of Eddie’s neck, holding him there, his mouth seeking and kind of needy in the dark, kissing Eddie back. Eddie shifts forward a little, body not quite finding Richie’s under the blanket but his cold feet touching Richie’s legs, and Richie makes a little gasping noise and almost all the nervous strain in his body just dies. He goes slack, his mouth open and wet. Eddie, mimicking what he likes for lack of any better idea, gently presses his teeth down onto Richie’s bottom lip, feeling it give.

“Oh my god,” Richie says incoherently.

Eddie grabs him by his stupid square jaw and hauls his chin up so Richie doesn’t have any room to talk, and just kisses him like he asked. Soft and full and with the faint hint of rice vinegar and with Richie’s breath hitching. He can feel his pulse rabbiting away in his jugular under Eddie’s fingers.

When he pulls back Richie slumps immediately, like a puppet with strings cut now Eddie’s no longer touching him.

“Okay?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah.” Richie tucks his chin and puts his hand over his eyes. “Yeah, fuck, sorry, I’m just a teenage girl all of a sudden, shit.”

Eddie feels like he shouldn’t be allowed to blush anymore but the tingling fans across his cheekbones. “I’m really not—I.”

“I’m good,” Richie says. “I’m good.”

“I know.”

Richie ducks his head further. “Shit.”

Eddie has no idea what to do right now, to make it worse or make it better.

“Go to sleep,” he says. “I’m gutting your apartment in the morning.”

Richie’s laugh comes out strangled but real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I think next chapter's going to be the last one, it'll be kind of a different tone than these have been so far because it's an epilogue, and I don't expect to get it out before Tuesday because road trip for cow. But I didn't expect to post today either, so.
> 
> For my official IT-fic tumblr sideblog where I admit to writing this thing, check out [tthael on tumblr](https://tthael.tumblr.com/) (Things That Happen after Eddie Lives). I'm organizing my inspirations for scenes from this fic, for characterization, and for a lovely piece of fanart drawn by sn0wbrigade [here](https://tthael.tumblr.com/post/188022706839/sn0wbrigade-richie-leans-over-slowly-staring). You'll also be able to look at the meta I'm gathering for the Benverly companion, any playlists I post, other content related to this series that I post, and all the IT art I love but have been too shy about blogging on main. Thank you so much for reading!


	11. In Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god they were (FINALLY) roommates!
> 
> Richie tries to give Eddie everything he owns. Eddie gives Richie standards of living. The Losers Club of 1989 have a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first of all: clocking in at 272 pages, this fic is officially done, which also makes it both my longest fic on this site and the longest writing project I've ever completed to my satisfaction. More details about the series in the end notes.
> 
> Second: sn0wbrigade drew another [fanart](https://tthael.tumblr.com/post/188065050139/sn0wbrigade-back-at-it-with-another-messy) and I love it, go look at Eddie's expression and Richie's hair and leather jacket.
> 
> Content warnings: internalized homophobia, mention of drug use, adjusting to new medications, anxiety, explicit sexual content, awkward sex, mention of erectile dysfunction, accidental outing. See the end notes for expanded content warning.

Eddie hates Richie’s apartment.

Richie wakes up to “God, there’s no light in here,” and then the rattle of the blinds whisking open. He opens his eyes to overwhelming _whiteness_ in the room as the sunlight flows in. Eddie is a shape over by the window, elbows bent with his hands on his hips.

“That’s because people are sleeping,” Richie mumbles.

“You’re not people.”

Richie is torn between putting his glasses on so he can see Eddie standing there in briefs or putting a pillow over his head entirely. He opts for closing his eyes again. “I know I’m not people, I’m hot.”

“You need sunlight, Richie! Vitamin D deficiency has very real consequences on mental and physical health.”

Eyes shut, Richie grins.

“What—_shut up_,” Eddie says. The door to the bedroom opens with more aggression than it needs.

“If I have a Vitamin D deficiency, you can help me with it in other ways.”

Eddie ignores him and Richie hears the blinds in the living room pulling up, all plastic sliding. Then Eddie says, “Jeez, Richie, can you even stand on this balcony?”

Richie’s ‘balcony’ extends about a single foot away from the side of the building.

“Nope, it’d snap right off and I’d plummet to my death. Too much Vitamin D, you know, the weight balance, the fire code.”

“You are a travesty.”

Eddie is equally horrified by discovery that Richie took his only toothbrush with him to Derry, and that Richie doesn’t have a secret backup toothbrush unmarred by sharing a suitcase with jizz-stained pants and underwear.

“Eds, you’re supposed to have thirty-two teeth, not thirty-two toothbrushes.” Richie frowns. “Teethbrushes. Teethbrush. God, English is stupid.” He feels slow, but in the way that syrup dripping out of the bottle is slow. He frowns. “Do I have pancake mix?”

“Check for your damn self,” Eddie tells him.

He does have dry pancake mix, which is good because it means they don’t have to eat raw fish for breakfast. Not that Richie’s above that, it’d be one of the more expensive breakfasts in his life, but he didn’t think Eddie would go for it. While Eddie storms around the apartment, muttering to himself, Richie washes the frying pan without aid of chlorine tablets and sets it on the burner. Despite the sound and smell of cooking, Eddie genuinely seems not to realize what’s going on—he found Richie’s closet and is just _enraged_—until Richie thunks a plate of pancakes on the countertop.

Then Eddie stands there, baffled. “What are you doing?”

“Eating. Have you heard of it?” Richie asks. He gestures with the spatula. “Sit down.”

Eddie, holding four nearly-identical shirts of Richie’s in his hands, lets his arms fall in the middle of gesticulating. “Oh,” he says, and sits down and eats.

Later Richie goes downstairs to get the mail, and finds the envelope he was expecting.

He waits until he’s sure Kristen, the day concierge, is not paying attention to him, and then he whispers, “Anything else I need to know here?”

Nothing. His mouth does nothing, either with or without his permission.

“Well, thanks for showing up, Stan,” Richie mutters.

“Good morning, Los Angeles!” Stan practically shouts with Richie’s body.

Kristen the concierge turns to look at him with some concern.

Richie gives his apologetic smile and walks back to the elevator. “Oh, fuck you too,” he mutters.

When he shuts his apartment door there’s immediately a responding thud from the bathroom, and the sound of something tearing, and then a clang. Richie drops his mail. “Eddie?”

“Fine,” Eddie says. The water’s still running. It shuts off after a moment, and he hears Eddie cursing. Eddie pokes his head through the bathroom door, wet hair plastered to his head. “So I fell through your shower curtain,” he says.

“Jesus!” Richie says. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Eddie says in that super unconvincing way he has.

Richie makes a mental note that he needs a walk-in shower. He’s going to have to move anyway.

Eddie needs a job.

The phone conversations with his former boss are awkward at best. He adopts Richie’s explanation and makes vague references to some kind of break or turning point in his life—he does not say midlife-crisis—and admits to separating from his wife and being involved in a court case. The company agrees only to confirm the dates of Eddie’s employment and say nothing about the circumstances of his departure. After that phone call Eddie has to sit on the Abominable Couch with his head between his knees for a little bit.

_Open up your chest_, Ben said.

Richie comes out of the bathroom to find Eddie with his arms over his head, doing his best to lay on the couch. “The fuck?” he asks pleasantly.

“I’m unemployed,” Eddie groans. “I don’t think I’ve been unemployed since I was—” He frowns, trying to remember. “—sixteen?” He has vague images, bicycle frames and pedals mounted on a wall, and a kid walking in with a soft-serve ice cream cone.

“Then it’s a vacation,” Richie says.

Eddie is still very aware that, despite his conversations with his bank and the opening of his account, his resources are half what he’s used to them being. “Mm-mmm,” he says, shaking his head. “Mm-mm-mm-mm-mmm.”

“Is this yoga?”

“Ben taught me,” Eddie says. “I don’t know what your finances look like, but you need a new couch.”

Richie’s eyebrows raise and he looks up toward the ceiling, thinking. “Yeah, I got, like, sixty-one hundred dollars in cash, you can buy a couch for that, right?”

Eddie sits upright on the couch, which somehow manages to stab him in the elbows. “You have—_where did your other three thousand dollars go?”_

Richie stares at Eddie like _Eddie’s_ the one completely out of his mind. “From the casino?” Richie asks. “I gave you half the nine thousand.”

“I—I didn’t_ do anything with it, Richie_, it’s still _here_, you can have it back.”

Richie looks incredulous. “Do you have any money?”

“Yes,” Eddie snaps back.

Richie puts up his hands. “Guess we’re buying a couch, then.”

They buy a couch. It’s nice. Richie hires two college students to remove the Abominable Couch from the apartment and bring up the new one, and tries to use an app on his new smartphone to play “Taps” on a virtual trumpet. It goes very poorly.

“Give me your phone,” Eddie says.

“No.”

He reaches across for it. “Give me your phone.”

Richie, standing a full four inches taller than Eddie, holds his phone over his head and stands on his toes while Eddie tries to climb him and take the phone out of his hand.

“Y’all are cute,” says one of the college students. “Are you Richie Tozier?”

Eddie freezes and Richie chooses that moment to snap a picture. That gets sent to the Losers Club group text with the caption “buff college kid says we’re cute.” It is the new worst photo of Eddie that has ever been taken.

It’s the best photo Richie’s ever taken. Looks like a Renaissance painting.

Richie stands with his hands in his pockets, surveying the new couch. It barely fits in the space between the far wall and the kitchen counter. They had to move one of the barstools to make room for it.

Eddie watches him looking at it.

“Kinda makes the rest of the place look like a dump, huh?” Richie says.

“God, I hate your apartment,” Eddie says. He gave up trying to keep it to himself at least a week ago. Richie, who has always been able to hear it in the way that Eddie paces around, opens and shuts cabinets and doors, and grits his teeth before getting in the shower, is kind of amused that Eddie thinks he was being subtle about it.

Richie shrugs and flings himself down onto the new couch. “Break it in with me,” he says.

Eddie makes a noise of disgust and says, “Oh, god, do you have to say it like that?”

“Yes.” Richie makes a fish face and kissing sounds.

“Why am I here?” Eddie asks, but he climbs into Richie’s lap anyway.

Richie says, “Come see this thing.”

Eddie, who is staring at his cover letter and frantically matching verbs to the job description says, “What?” _Come see this thing_ can mean anything from _I have discovered a massive beetle in the corner of the window_ or _Let me explain why this episode of this sitcom that I enjoy but you find stupid runs counter to the message of the entire show and thereby fails the rules of comedy_ or _Surprise, we’re going to a movie._

Richie jangles his keys.

Eddie looks at his laptop clock. “It’s like eleven, Richie, where are we going?” He blinks. “Why are you up?”

That’s an exaggeration. Richie’s been up at odd hours—less so since Eddie introduced sunlight into the apartment—and hunching over yellow legal pads he seems to own in bulk. Sometimes he’s up at eight when Eddie drags his laptop out into the living room for another round of job applications; sometimes he’s up at four in the morning when Eddie rolls over in bed feeling curiously bereft; sometimes he’s asleep on the couch at five in the afternoon. He takes phone calls with his manager into the next room, they talk, and he comes back out looking much the same.

Eddie has only glanced at what Richie’s writing. Richie’s capital letters are spiky and oversize, and the rest of his writing is completely undecipherable. The brief segment he gets a glance at could read either _Fucking when Bev_ or _Fucking with Ben_.

He doesn’t ask. It keeps Richie quiet while Eddie writes and rewrites his resume from his masterlist.

Richie jangles his keys again.

“You are the most annoying human being in the entire world, I’m not a dog, you can’t just summon me by ringing a bell and expect me to go on a walk—or, on a drive, I guess—” Eddie is in the middle of putting his coat on, it’s almost November. “—and I’m losing valuable time I should be spending doing job applications, if I miss anything—”

Richie’s just watching him get ready to leave and grinning.

“God, your fucking face,” Eddie interrupts himself, furious, and grabs Richie by the collar and kisses him until Richie pins him up against the kitchen counter. He feels some of the tension he’s carrying in his neck and shoulders unwind, and then he pats Richie’s hip and breaks apart and says, “Okay, are we going somewhere or not?”

There’s a faint little lift to the corner of Richie’s mouth that makes Eddie immediately suspicious; it’s his _I’m going to be smug later_ not _I’m being smug now_ face. He straightens up and hauls Eddie upright with him. “We could be,” Richie says. “Your idea’s pretty good too.”

“It’s not an idea,” Eddie says.

Richie smiles and tilts his head, looking away, and tucks his hands in his jacket pocket; he’s almost forty-one and he’s never learned what the hell to do with his arms. “All right, Magical Mystery Tour. I’m not telling you where we’re going, I’m not fighting with your magic powers the whole trip there.”

“How long will it take?”

Richie tilts his head the other direction. “Like two hours, tops?”

“Okay.”

It’s an apartment viewing.

Eddie doesn’t catch on until Richie’s parking outside something clearly labeled a leasing office, and then he reaches out and grabs him by the arm instead of letting him lift his hand off the gearshift. “Richie.”

An apartment viewing means a number of bedrooms that tells a realtor exactly where they sleep and inspecting ceilings for evidence of water damage and trying to guess how long it’s been since the carpet’s been shampooed and wandering into strange empty white rooms that still have Eddie a little unsettled. Even Richie’s current apartment—unpainted—still rattles him a little in its spartan décor and its minimalism that came with the building. Look at Richie Tozier’s shirts. That’s maximalism in action.

Richie’s eyelids have taken on the casual careful _this doesn’t matter to me nearly as much as every cell in my body is screaming it does_ kind of cast. “We’re scheduled to look at eleven-forty-five,” he says calmly. “We can blow it off, if you want. Go to lunch. Do something else.”

Eddie’s throat feels tight. “Don’t fucking patronize me, Tozier.”

“I said, we can do something else, I’ll show you patronizing,” Richie says with a leer.

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Oh, if you ask me, I’m gonna tell you.”

“Get out of the goddamn car.”

The apartment is on the ground floor.

“Absolutely not,” Eddie tells Richie. “You need the windows open and I don’t want anyone being able to just walk by and look into our home. And the floors were convex, did you see? That’s a bad foundation and no mistake. But. If we’re looking.”

That’s the smug smile, even as Richie fits his keys into Eddie’s hand and slings himself into the passenger seat, knee up on the dashboard as he cranks the seat all the way back instead of the four inches actually between their heights.

“If,” he agrees.

“If we’re looking. We have to have another dishwasher, or I’m going to murder you with a cast-iron skillet. And you need a bigger washer and dryer, and the in-unit ones maybe cost more in power and water, but you don’t have to worry about the quarters.”

“Oh, no, quarters are no problem,” Richie says.

Eddie frowns.

“Yeah, they sell the keys to those pay-per-wash washers and dryers on Amazon, anyone can just buy one and take all the quarters out,” Richie says.

Eddie jabs his seatbelt into the buckle. “You can’t just _do_ that, Richie!”

“I’ll have you know I can, I have two-day free shipping.”

“Amazon is _so bad_,” Eddie says, and launches into an explanation of why. If he can sit through Richie’s character analyses of _It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia_, which always boil down to _I have a crush on Charlie Day that’s a thinly-veiled form of narcissism_, Richie can deal.

Richie writes.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing in the foreground—he might be in traffic or something, he can’t remember, but suddenly the interrogation with Derry Police floats to the front of his mind, he thinks clearly, _Mike Hanlon is braver than any damn cop, in Maine or otherwise._

And it rings around in his head. It’s not funny yet, it means something else, something deeper and too traumatic for Richie to uproot in one pull, but it hangs around in the back of his mind.

“Hey, the magic wants you to know you’re braver than cops,” he tells Mike the next time they’re on the phone.

“Man, we knew that,” Mike says. “What’re you doing for your birthday?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Richie answers, because he has a number of ideas, none of which Eddie will let happen if it’s even suggested another living soul is aware of them.

Mike chuckles. “Yeah, I bet you can’t.” Richie doesn’t know what kind of wild life Mike thinks Richie leads in Las Vegas, but part of Richie is a little loathe to disappoint him. “Obviously Bill’s with his wife for Christmas, but I’ve been considering the virtues of international travel.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Gonna show up outside Denbrough’s house with a boombox or what?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna play ‘Purple Rain,’ his wife will leave him, and he’ll be free for the holidays. Whaddaya think?”

“Think that sounds like a plan, Mikey,” Richie says.

“How’s Eddie?”

“Oh, ready to murder me.”

“What’d’you do?”

“He’s stir-crazy,” Richie says. “He wants a job, there’s not enough room for both of us to be in the apartment at the same time, and I’ve been—” His breath catches and he coughs, feeling suddenly and unaccountably vulnerable. “—I’ve been trying my hand at writing my own shit, since now I’m officially one more funnyman who had a psychic break and went all sad clown, there’s nothing to lose.”

“No, I’m pretty sure there’s something to lose,” Mike says. “Your psychic break hasn’t involved, like, meth or anything so far, has it?”

“Can you even _imagine_?” Richie groans. “No, I tried coke at a party when I was like twenty, and I haven’t even told Eddie that because he’ll—oh hi, Eddie.”

“Because I’ll what?” Eddie demands.

Mike chuckles in his ear. “I’ll let you go. Text later if you’re still alive.”

“What do you think I’m gonna do about something that happened in _1995, Richie?”_

“I love you,” Richie says into the phone, his voice dropping low. “Pray for me.”

Richie lives.

He finishes the draft.

He brings it to Steve.

Steve takes his glasses off and blows out a long breath.

It has been a long time since Richie felt this physically sick in front of Steve. He’s got a new psychiatrist who threw an absolute fit when she found out how long he’s been on BuSpar—“It’s for short-term usage and you’ve been on it _since it was BuSpar_?”—and now she’s rotating him through low doses of SSRIs. The one Richie’s on right now is causing hives to break out all over his wrists and hands, and also it doesn’t come with the _attack_-calming part. Richie tries not to scratch while he waits for the verdict. He was calmer during the actual murder trial.

Steve picks up the manuscript. “Do you mean all this?”

Richie’s gaze flicks to the wastepaper basket beside Steve’s desk. It’s all wire. Richie can’t vomit in it, so he’s just going to have to hold it together like a real goddamn adult.

“It’s true, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says.

Steve’s mouth twists up. “I think we can sell it,” he says. “I mean, there’s a market for that kind of stuff nowadays—”

“That kind of stuff?” Richie asks dryly.

Steve waves a hand. “Hannah Gadsby. Mike Birbiglia. That kid who sings. The whole—there’s a voyeuristic quality to it, people want to watch.”

Richie thinks Hannah Gadsby is_ brilliant_ but also he’s never once thought of comparing himself to her. Standing up on the stage and saying _I can’t help you and I won’t help you anymore._

“Jeez, tell me how you really feel, Steve.”

“No, no, no, it’s good. It’s good,” Steve says. He pats the manuscript—which Richie typed out on Eddie’s laptop while Eddie was out doing job interviews because Richie’s computer keyboard is just fucked—and then drums his fingers across it. “I think the only problem is going to be that you already have such an established backlog. People have in their heads a sense of your brand, a sense of who you are, and they like that about you. Now, I’m not gonna say that you have to stay with that, that’d be insane, only that you’re going to have to expect some backlash. People don’t like to be proven wrong.”

“Oh, is that what people don’t like,” Richie asks just as dryly.

Steve waves a hand. “This is pretty impressive turnaround, especially in such a short time. Are you sure you want to do this? We might have to talk to the widow first, see how much she’s comfortable with.”

“Whatever she wants,” Richie’s mouth says.

Steve’s eyebrow goes up. “And if she wants a cut?”

“She deserves it,” Stan says with Richie’s mouth, almost in Richie’s voice. Richie swallows and gains control of his own body again. “I mean, Stan was that good a friend, I’m not gonna just throw him all out there and leave her with nothing.”

Steve continues frowning, staring past Richie at one of the framed posters on his wall. Then he shakes his head. “This is your first time writing something for yourself, let alone something _this intense_. I’m not saying it’s out of the question, I’m saying I just don’t know how to hear it in your voice. I’m not sure I’m _getting_ it. Did you read this aloud when you wrote it?”

“No,” Richie says stupidly, feeling he’s missed a massive step in the process.

Steve pushes the manuscript across the table at him. “Just read me the beginning, let me get a sense of what it’s gonna sound like.”

Feeling unaccountably self-conscious, Richie leans forward and picks up the stack of paper. He closes his eyes. He tries to put himself in that place, where he walked out onto the stage and the light seemed to rotate around him as his legs carried him forward, and if people hate this it’s going to be so much worse than anything else Richie’s ever said that they hated, because this means something.

They might not like it, and that’s gonna have to be okay.

Richie reads aloud, pitching his voice up and down and trying to find the right balance of casually self-deprecating to flippant to sincere, and, once he feels he’s really gotten into the swing of it, it feels like Stan settling into his skull that night in Ben’s guest room, the way his body tipped back and his mouth said _That’s really good, I haven’t been drunk in ages_. He doesn’t look up at Steve, but he listens, and Steve gives quiet huffs of laughter barely indistinguishable from trying to dislodge snot from his nose.

Then Steve says, “Stop, stop, stop.”

Richie drops the manuscript onto his lap. At some point he leaned all the way back in his chair and stretched one leg out onto Steve’s desk; now he’s too aware of the casual disregard of it to move it. If he scrunches back up now Steve will know that he’s _fucking terrified_.

“That’ll work,” Steve says. “It works. God, I didn’t even know what you were saying until I heard it, and then it clicked, is that what your stuff sounds like all the time?”

Considering that this is Richie’s only stuff… “Yes,” he says.

“Fuck, what the hell were you doing?”

Richie shrugs. “I don’t know, it was your job to tell me what I’m doing.”

“Well, let me think on this for a little bit. We have to work out how to target it. I’m sure curiosity alone will get asses in the seats, but that’s a bombshell you can only really drop to effect once, and we have to pick it carefully. I’m glad you’re so upfront about the friend, it’ll make it very easy to sell you on sympathy alone.

_Thanks for showing up, Stan._

Steve’s desk lamp browns out for a moment. Steve looks at it, concerned.

Richie goes home to find he’s missed a call from Eddie. There’s also just an avalanche in the group text. Whatever it is, Eddie couldn’t wait for Richie to be the first to hear it. He calls.

“Interview went great,” Eddie says. “They offered me the job right there, oh my god, we’re not gonna starve to death.”

“We were never gonna starve to death,” Richie says. “Get a job on a cruise ship in a shiny suit, maybe, but never starve to death. Anyway, Steve says I can do the routine.”

Eddie pauses. “How much of me is in the routine?”

“However much you tell me I can have,” Richie says. He’s not looking to out Eddie professionally or anything; he doesn’t even have to use his name, but once people know about Richie people are going to make assumptions about Eddie.

Eddie audibly swallows and then says, “Can I read it?”

Richie’s blushing in his car, like some kind of kid. “I—yeah?”

“Not tonight,” Eddie says. “Maybe, like, not for a while, I just wanna eat some fucking cake and lay on the floor for a little bit, but. If I’m in it.”

“Yeah,” Richie says; at this point what’s the harm in handing Eddie His Entire Soul. It’s there for people to laugh at. “Also, hey, I’m totally allergic to this new drug, my hands are hives all over, do I need to stop taking it?”

“You—_oh my god call the doctor!_”

Richie pulls off and says, “If you’re not gonna breathe, I’m gonna stop.”

Eddie is on his back, hips dragged to the end of the bed, with both his arms up over his face. He makes an indignant noise—he was getting close, and now he can only feel _cold_ and _ebbing away_ and _oh god what if the neighbors heard that._ He unfolds a little and glares down, which is a mistake because of how Richie looks right now with his face that close to Eddie’s dick. _“Why?”_

Behind the glasses Richie’s eyes widen a little bit, black in his white face with his red mouth. Then he smirks and flicks Eddie on the point of his hipbone. “Why do I want you _breathing_?”

Eddie cannot look at him smirking with his lips swollen like that; he gives up and flops back down and rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. “You—I was—god you’re so _fucking annoying_.”

That’s Richie giggling, his forehead resting on the inside of Eddie’s thigh. “Breathe or call it, Kaspbrak.” There’s a little tugging pressure on his skin, Richie sucking a hickey onto him where no one can see.

Eddie slaps his hands down on the comforter, rolls his eyes again, and makes a great parody of a wheezing inhale—_“Heeeeeee_”—which Richie sees fit to interrupt by licking his cock and ends in a cascade of _“oh oh oh oh oh,”_ Eddie’s shoulders curling up as he tries to hunch protectively over his body.

Richie’s still laughing. Eddie kicks him in the vicinity of what he thinks is the ass. Richie laughs harder.

“Fuck you, Trashmouth, I don’t even have fucking asthma.”

“You’ll like it better.”

Eddie burns up basically every time Richie casually says something to remind him how much sex he’s had and that he knows what the fuck he’s doing, and this is no different. If he’s gonna spend the rest of his life casually getting hard over Richie tossing out the word _like_, he’s just done for. He covers his eyes again. “Why are you still talking?”

Little huff of breath on his hipbones. Then Richie says, “Breathe,” pins his hips, and slides his mouth down on Eddie again.

Eddie breathes. He can hear his breath rising in the room, little sounds of fabric as he shifts on the comforter, and the objectively disgusting but weirdly compelling wet sounds Richie’s mouth makes, jaw loose and tongue sliding. Eddie knows exactly what oxygen does to fire but he breathes in and heat drags up his body and into his lungs and his face. Instinctively his body tries to twist away, but Richie’s hands shove his pelvis down hard and Eddie jackknifes his upper body off the bed again, hunching over and torn by equal desire to say _Nope, I was wrong, I can’t take it, stop_ or to grab Richie by the hair. His legs reach for the floor but can’t reach, can only strain and shake.

Eventually Eddie jams his right hand between his teeth, bites down hard on the web of skin there, and hears himself make a high-pitched whine. His face is already bright red, so that doesn’t make any difference, but it rings in his ears and in the empty room and _please don’t let the neighbors have heard that,_ Eddie hasn’t met many of them and if this is their first introduction to him—

Richie’s eyes open and flick up to Eddie’s face behind his glasses.

Eddie’s thighs lock up and he comes, hips spasming. Richie chokes, pulls back, and gets come all over his face. And glasses. Like he’s a damn porn star. It is not hot, Eddie decides firmly, no matter the votes his body is putting in—that _cannot be allowed _to be hot.

“O-_oh_, god fucking damn it, Richie,” Eddie sighs, panting.

With an alarming _crack_ from his knee, Richie’s leaping up faster than Eddie thought he could. He pulls off his glasses and pointing accusingly at Eddie. “Cheater!” he declares. “That was mine!”

“What?”

Richie climbs forward onto the bed, onto Eddie, and Eddie lets himself fall back in an effort to put distance between himself and Richie’s face, because _gross_. “That was mine, it—” One hand braces above Eddie’s shoulder and Richie stretches across the bed, reaching for the nightstand; he tosses his glasses toward the table and they overshoot and go skittering off and collide with the wall. Richie rolls his eyes and grabs a tissue and wipes his own face—not very thoroughly, his cheek and jaw still look slick. He throws the tissue too.

Eddie makes a strangled noise.

Richie looks back down at him. “That was mine, if you’re gonna bite on anything to keep quiet that’s cheating, that’s not fair, I’m going to hold you down next time and I’m gonna hear you—”

“Hear _me_?” Eddie demands, incredulous. “Oh no.” Richie bends to kiss him and Eddie turns his face away. “Don’t even think about—hah!” Richie presses his face into Eddie’s neck and Eddie’s whole body locks up in a valiant effort to handle that stimulation too, simultaneously repulsed and _sensitive_. “Richie, gross!”

“Not too gross to get you there,” Richie points out. He grabs Eddie’s right wrist and turns his hand this way and that, looking at the bitemarks. “Fucking cheap trick, Kaspbrak. If I can get down at my age and blow you, you can at least show me you like it.”

“‘At your age,’ you’re younger than me, and I _fucking did_, you psycho, you’ve got come on your face,” Eddie snaps back, and throws his body weight into Richie and bowls him over.

Richie’s eyes do the wide glazed thing they always do when Eddie pins him; Eddie puts his right knee on Richie’s left thigh so he can’t move. They grapple for a moment, each trying to get hold of the other’s wrists, but Richie wants to lose so Eddie grabs hold of him under his chin and presses gently on the soft spots on either side of his windpipe where his jaw meets his throat.

Richie’s mouth opens and his breath comes out in a three-beat shudder. His hips shift, seeking pressure.

“Not so fucking chatty now,” Eddie observes, but he’s absolutely not ready to choke Richie during sex so he puts his left hand on Richie’s sternum and slowly leans his weight onto his chest. “This all right?”

Richie nods, eyes wild. “Yes please fuck can you just—”

Eddie nods; the new meds are proving endlessly frustrating for Richie, in that he can get off _fast_ or he can’t get off at all and Richie puts a hand over his eyes and apologetically tells Eddie it’s not gonna work and Eddie feels his ears burn and has a little crisis of sexual competence. With faint revulsion Eddie spits into his hand—they used to spit for fun, when they were kids, and Eddie never even thought about this—and starts jerking him off, quick and tight.

Richie’s spine ratchets up by degrees, fighting Eddie’s lean across his body. His eyes shut and his lips press together and he groans, words spilling out incoherently: “_Oh_ yes like that, you’re gonna kill me, god, _fuck_, I just need—” His hips shift again, his head tilting back and the column of his throat straining. Eddie thinks very seriously about biting him and then ducks his head, almost embarrassed by the impulse. “—please can you just a little more, yes, oh—”

Eddie stops.

Richie’s hips and shoulders strain up, face tilting toward him; Eddie can hear his toes shift on the sheets behind him. “What, I—?”

“Is this okay on your back?” Eddie asks very seriously.

To Eddie’s infinite delight Richie _sobs_ and starts to shake.

He stops teasing and sets about finishing him off, ignoring the ache in his wrist.

“God you’re such an asshole, I love you, you can fucking paralyze me for all I care _oh there there there_—” Eddie rises slightly as Richie’s body tenses up and his mouth opens and he comes with a cracked little _“ah,” _practically understatement after his chatter. Eddie strokes him through the minute thrusts of his hips and the cramp in his own hand, until Richie twists away and begs, “Stop stop stop.”

Eddie lets himself smirk as he climbs off of Richie and goes to wipe his hand clean. Richie reaches out blindly—if he catches Eddie he’ll draw him down and bear hug him and Eddie won’t be able to move—but Eddie throws the box of tissues at him. Richie doesn’t even try to catch that, just lets it hit him in the side.

“I’ve created a monster,” he says, his eyes shut. “This is how Frankenstein felt.”

“This is not how Frankenstein felt, I’ve actually read Frankenstein, there’s no exchange of handjobs in Frankenstein.”

“Maybe I’m describing the porno.”

“Please don’t reveal that you have a Frankenstein kink this late in our relationship, that’s like an upfront disclaimer kind of thing.”

Richie, always a little punchy after sex, laughs harder than the joke is actually worth and makes no effort to clean himself up.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “If you use mouthwash you can join me in the shower.”

Richie laughs harder, wheezing out, “Good game, coach.”

He rolls his eyes again and walks around the bed toward the door to the bathroom. If he lets himself lay down he’s going to get sleepy and then he won’t clean up when he should, because Richie is a bad influence. “Are you coming or not?”

“Not for a while again, how young do you think I am?”

Despite the joke, Richie rinses his mouth out and joins Eddie in the walk-in shower.

Eddie reads his material.

Richie cannot physically be in the room with Eddie while he reads; he keeps watching Eddie for facial reactions and he’s twisting over Eddie’s chair like a nosy neighbor leaning over a fence. Eventually Eddie throws a throw pillow at him. Richie owns throw pillows now, because his boyfriend seems to want to use them only as projectile weapons.

“Oh my god, go unload the dishwasher!” Eddie orders. “Jerk off! Organize your sock drawer! Be somewhere else!”

That’s a lot of instructions in a bunch of genres so Richie sullenly folds laundry. Eddie requires his clothing to be separated by color even though it all gets washed on cold, and then towels on hot, with a cap of bleach to prevent mildew. Richie’s towels have never smelled better. Richie didn’t know there was anything missing, but now he has, like, standards of living and stuff.

Eddie reads and by the time Richie’s done doing chores and scrubbing ineffectively at the countertop with a disinfectant wipe he looks over and sees that Eddie’s eyebrows are basically at his hairline.

And that face could mean literally anything so Richie walks into the bedroom and throws himself down on the mattress and starts bombarding the Losers with meaningless strings of emojis.

Beverly responds with _octopus—hiking boot—North Korean flag_.

“Thank you, Bev,” Richie says. _Flamenco dancer, cookie, cookie, squirting water droplets._

_Memo, knife, desert, memo, hazard sign, potato, chicken head._

And so forth. At one point Mike appears in the chat to ask what the hell they’re doing and they both spam him with _palm tree_ until he gives up and mutes them.

He hears Eddie get up in the living room and braces himself, swinging his legs off the bed so that he’s sitting up and ready to take bad news on his feet. If Eddie’s like Steve and doesn’t get what Richie’s saying without hearing it, Richie’s absolutely not going to be able to read it out to him.

Eddie appears in the doorway, script in hand. He’s all big brown eyes and cheek scar. “Richie,” he says.

Richie’s instinct is a preemptive strike. “Eduardo.”

“What the fuck?” He brandishes the script. There’s enough time for Richie’s stomach to sink before he says, “Okay, you can’t talk about the shorts I wore when I was a kid, that makes you sound like you need to go to prison _right now_, and if you put the thing about my job in I’m going to actually kill you—did you say your agent saw that?”

Right.

Richie showed Eddie the script in a _can’t help it, have to see if anyone will actually think this is funny before I decide to do it onstage_ kind of vaccinatory thing for when the world discovers his work sucks, and Eddie accepted it as a given that it was _going_ on stage and started doing damage control for what Richie said about him. Just accepted that audiences would show up.

_“I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen,”_ Richie quotes in his best John Cusack.

“What?”

Richie shakes his head. “Yeah, Steve saw it.”

_“Richie.”_ Eddie throws the manuscript at him. It, being a stack of paper, misses him wildly and bursts into a flock of pages all over the room.

Richie turns forty-one.

With the perpetual complex given to those who have December birthdays, worsening as the days creep closer to Christmas, he both wants attention for his birthday and resents the distractions. As a kid, this meant that Richie was unbearable; Eddie has vague memories of celebrating an _anti-birthday_ for Richie during the summer when they were in grade school, eating watermelon out on the Toziers’ lawn. As an adult, this means that Richie’s subsuming his rejection of aging into his rejection of Christmas.

“Pizza,” Richie declared. “And cake, and I’m getting you on that couch one way or another.”

Eddie blushed and invited Richie to fuck off and made the expected protests about not defiling the couch. Richie just looked at him, so transparently imagining it that Eddie threw a throw pillow at him and told him to “Put your face away.”

Now there’s a knock at the door and Eddie sits up. “They’re not supposed to be able to get in the building without us letting them in,” he says. “It’s like the neighbors have _no_ respect for other people’s safety.” He doesn't do voices, but he thinks he sounds pretty convincing.

Richie lurches to his feet. There’s a party hat balanced on his head—not held on by an elastic string, just tucked in with his curls. Eddie doesn’t know where he got it. Richie also obviously wants Eddie to comment on it, so he’s been ignoring it since he got home from work.

“I got it, I got it, if the pizza guy murders me you’ll have time to spider-climb out the window, these are the sacrifices I make for you. And by the way, you better violate some Geneva conventions on this pizza, there’s no room in the fridge for leftovers next to your _carrot juice_.”

“If you drank carrot juice, maybe your prescription would stabilize and you could get the Lasik you’re always bitching about,” Eddie replies.

Richie pauses with his hand on the doorknob and turns back to him. “Oh, are we pretending you don’t get off on the glasses? Is that what we’re doing?”

Eddie’s face _burns_ but it’s too late, Richie opens the door.

Mike is standing there with four pizza boxes balanced on one hand. “Somebody order a pizza?” he asks. If he heard anything through the door, he’s holding a _killer_ poker face.

Eddie slaps his palm to his forehead and turns off the TV.

Richie doesn’t miss a beat, his voice pitching up into nasal and slightly whiny: “I did, but I don’t have any money, how will I pay for this pizza?”

“Well—” Mike takes a step forward and then breaks, laughing. “Take your damn pizza, man.”

Richie takes the pizza boxes and drops them on the counter, then hugs Mike. Mike comes into the apartment and Eddie gets up; Bev files through the doorway next and accepts her hugs, followed by Ben.

“You sneaky bastard, Eddie,” Richie says.

“I didn’t hear a _thank you_ in there. Hi, Mike.” Hugging Mike makes Eddie feel about as doll-size as he ever has in his life.

“Nice place,” Mike says. “Merry early Christmas.”

“_Richmas_,” Richie insists. “You all better be ready, Mr. _Don’t tell me what’s in the sushi_ over there ordered an everything pizza and for my birthday I’m watching him eat black olives.”

“That’s pretty fucking weird, Rich,” Ben says amiably. He closes the door behind him.

“_Don’t_ tell me what’s on it,” Eddie snaps. He’s trying to pull up Skype on the smart-TV. “Ben, come help me get Bill on the screen.”

“What, Denbrough couldn’t be bothered to—_hey, Haystack_.” Eddie glances over and sees that Ben has just pressed a bottle of whiskey into Richie’s hands. “Welcome to my home, you are now the most valuable guest at the surprise party, please stay as long as you like, have you met Eddie?”

“Your hat,” Bev says, and stands on her toes to adjust it.

Richie obediently stoops for it and then steals a kiss off her cheek. “Love you, Bev.”

“Stealing my man?”

“Oh, your _man_,” Richie singsongs.

Ben has achieved getting Skype up on the TV and now it’s singing as they dial Bill. Bill warned that it would be really early morning for him but seemed willing enough to make an appearance. As the camera clicks on he appears in what’s definitely a badly-lit hotel room, looking rumpled and holding a cup of coffee, but smiling.

“Merry fucking Christmas, Richie,” Bill says.

Richie appears to teleport across the apartment: one minute he’s by Bev in the kitchen and the next he’s slinging an arm over Eddie’s shoulder. “Hey, Denbrough, are you just not up and abandoning your wife for Christmas for all of _this_?_”_ He sweeps the hand holding the Wild Turkey down his body.

“Tempting,” Bill says dryly. “Audra’s filming right now in exchange for today and tomorrow off, so I’m a free agent, at least until she gets home.”

“Kept man. Nice work if you can get it. What time is it there?”

“It’s like three in the goddamn morning,” Bill says.

Richie’s face twists up into the parody of being deeply touched that he uses to hide how he’s actually deeply touched. “For_ me_? You shouldn’t have.” He lets Eddie go, whiskey bottle outstretched as he picks his way across the living room around the four other people. “Surprise party at my age, Eds, baby, you—”

And it would have been fine, if Richie hadn’t realized what he said and _caught himself_. He flirted with Mike literally the _second_ he realized Mike was there, but he calls Eds _baby_ and then chokes like he didn’t mean to say it, which of course makes it _ten thousand times more conspicuous than it would be otherwise._

There is protracted, painful silence, both in the living room and internationally.

Eddie covers his face with his hand. “It’s been two fucking minutes, Richie.” He’s not even drunk.

Mike doubles over in silent laughter and falls onto the couch. Bev is likewise visibly trying to suppress a smile. Eddie can’t even look at the TV to see what Bill’s thinking.

He stalks after Richie into the kitchen. “Give me the booze. We’re dating! Everyone happy?” It’s not like he didn’t expect them to count the number of doors and work out that there’s definitely only one bedroom in this apartment, but he was kind of counting on it being later in the evening and _not_ because Richie fucked up.

“No,” Bev says in mock disbelief.

Eddie’s shoulders leap to his ears.

Richie has turned all the way around, color standing out on his cheeks. “You knew,” he says slowly. “You sneaky bitch.”

“Hey,” Ben barks, and tosses the remote onto one of the chairs.

Bev is grinning. “Richie, you called Pennywise a _sloppy bitch _in front of us. We knew about you back in like September.”

“We didn’t know you and Eddie were dating, for sure,” Mike says. “For one thing, Eddie’s classy.”

“Give me the fucking booze,” Eddie says, and Richie hands him the bottle. Eddie unscrews the cap and takes a swig straight out of the neck.

“Oh, classy!” Ben laughs.

“Yeah, it’s not the pursuit of dick that we didn’t expect,” Bill says. “We just thought Eddie would have better options.”

“Higher quality dick,” Bev says.

Richie’s party hat is hanging on for dear life. “All right, all right, trash the trashmouth, I see how it is, I’ll have you know my dick is of the _highest_ quality, line up to the camera, Firecrotch, I’ll show you—”

_“Richie,”_ Eddie says.

Richie glances at him, blushes, and then holds his hand out for the whiskey. “Give me that, we’ll see if Stan has any smart comments, go sit down.”

Normally Eddie would bristle at being told what to do, but he’s feeling weirdly shaky now the Band-Aid’s off. He staggers over to the couch and flops down next to Mike. Bev sits between them and laces her fingers through Eddie’s.

“So Eddie, blink twice if you’re here against your will,” Bill says. “I’ll take you in. My wife knows about Richie, she’ll understand.”

Eddie manages a frantic laugh and then puts his face in Bev’s shoulder.

“_Ha ha,_ Eddie’s out of my league, _hilarious, hysterical_,” Richie says from the kitchen.

“Oh my god,” Ben mutters.

“Who’s gonna eat all this fucking pizza?” Richie goes on. Eddie hears shot glasses being set down onto the counter. Then: “Whose is this _cheese pizza_?”

“It’s mine, don’t do Tim Curry, Richie, that’s terrifying,” Ben says louder.

“You can’t do pepperoni? That’s like, the minimum of pizza.”

“The minimum of pizza is bread,” Mike says.

“You eating so much crap is the reason Eddie’s out of your league,” Ben replies.

“Oh my god,” Eddie manages.

“It is fucking not,” Bill says on a short delay, “it’s one of the _many_ reasons.”

“Yeah, this is Los Angeles, there are like, hot people here,” Mike says.

“And yet you’re here, in a room, with me,” Richie says. “Bev, light of my life, what’re you drinking? We have whiskey and _carrot juice_.”

“Oh, are you going the full Bugs Bunny?” Bev asks.

“It’s not gonna help your eyes, Rich,” Bill says.

Richie flips off the room at large. Bill can’t see him from that angle, so Ben laughs and says, “You got him.”

Eddie is waiting for Richie to make an inappropriate sex joke that crosses the line, but he doesn’t. Another round of _oohs_ go up when he walks over and hands Eddie a plate with two slices of everything pizza on it.

“Good for you,” Bev says.

“But seriously, but seriously,” Ben says. “It’s great.”

Richie passes out a round of shots. Bill toasts from the camera with his mug.

“The Losers Club of 1989,” Bev says.

“And to Eddie Kaspbrak, making the greatest sacrifice for all of humanity,” Mike says.

Eddie throws back his shot.

“Fuck all of you,” Richie says.

“Okay okay okay, but—” Bill inches closer to the camera, steepling his hands. He purses his lips and then says slowly, “He hasn’t shut up about his dick since we were twelve.”

Bev laughs and insinuates an obscene gesture with only her thumb.

“And we could understand the ‘using him for his body’ thing until you found someone better,” Bill says. “But you’re dating. On this, the day of his birth—” He turns his hands to the camera. “Pray, speak your piece.”

“Leave him alone,” Richie says over the laughter and mad sniggering.

Everyone becomes extremely quiet. Eddie covers his mouth with his hand.

“He isn’t bad,” he admits.

Bev shrieks and falls backwards into Mike. Ben is doubled over in his chair, laughing. Mike crows, “Damned by faint praise, Trashmouth! The truth emerges!”

Eddie manages to glance over at Richie. He’s still behind the stack of pizzas, looking about as red as Eddie feels, but he has the stupidest wobbliest grin on his face.

“Another round,” Bev calls. “A toast, to Richie Tozier: he isn’t bad!”

“Does Haystack cry his way through sex, Molly Ringwald?” Richie shoots back, but he pours another round of drinks anyway.

Bev gives an enigmatic smile. “No, sir, he does not.”

“I need a drink, actually,” Ben says, looking red himself.

They eat through three of the four pizzas and keep drinking, and at one point Richie fumbles his plate and says acidly, _“Is that pepperoni? If it’s Hanukkah already I’ll fucking kill you, Trashmouth_.”

It’s a mark of how much they’ve had to drink that everyone simultaneously lifts their glasses and toasts the sudden appearance of Stan.

Bill, looking a bit gray in the face by virtue of being up so long, says, “Hey, Stan.”

“Uris,” Eddie says, “if you break him you don’t want to know what I’m going to do to you.”

Richie’s face sharpens and then softens, and in his own voice he drawls out, “Well that’s frightening but, not gonna lie, little turned on right now.”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie.” Eddie searches for something to throw at him but the nearest thing to hand is, unfortunately, Mike.

Bev has her phone out. “It’s tomorrow, Stanley,” she says.

Richie’s shoulders settle back into his chair. _“Well, that’s all right, then.”_

“How’s the everything pizza?” Ben asks.

Eddie grimaces. “It’s fine.”

Bev says, “Honey, if you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it—”

“I’m gonna eat it.”

_“Is there just cheese?”_ Stan asks.

Richie gets up.

“Fucking told you!” Ben calls after him.

“When do we get to the arm-wrestling portion of the evening?” Bev asks.

Bill says, “Okay, I’ll hang on so that Stan can have his pizza, but I gotta go to bed, guys, I’m too old for this.”

They boo him.

Richie’s body drops down into the chair and sprawls out like gravity is singling him out in particular, but he eats the cheese pizza very carefully and slowly. It’s very weird to watch; Eddie knows that technically Richie does acting, but he is so clearly not driving the bus right now.

“Happy Hanukkah, Stan,” Bev says.

“It’s—” Richie chokes and starts coughing. “It’s my fucking birthday!”

“Happy Richmas,” Ben says dryly.

Richie coughs more and Eddie gets up and hands him a glass of water. He thanks him with a nod and sips. Then Stan says clearly, _“Yes, I hear he isn’t bad_.”

They all dissolve into hysterics again. Riche says, “See if I take you hitchhiking again, Stan.”

“All right, all right,” Bill says, and they all quiet down. He says, “I’m going. I love you all.”

“We love you too.”

“Love you, Big Bill.”

“Love you!”

“Good night,” Bill says, and then he leans forward and the camera freezes, and then the screen goes blank.

In his wake, they all go a little quiet.

Then Richie says, “All right, are you drunk fuckers sleeping on my couch?”

“It’s a pretty nice couch,” Mike allows.

“Thank you, it hasn’t even been visibly fucked.”

Eddie chokes laughing.

Mike suddenly looks extremely uncomfortable on the couch. “Eddie, tell me the couch is clean.”

“The couch is clean,” Eddie confirms.

Mike relaxes.

“So, sleepover rules?” Richie asks. “Are we all flying out to England next month to harass Bill, or is this dubious honor mine and mine alone? Don’t you people have jobs?”

“Richie’s writing his own material now,” Eddie volunteers.

Richie looks at him in dramatic betrayal.

Ben pulls up YouTube on the TV and they watch a few clips of Richie in his twenties, looking floppy-haired and incredibly young, until Richie falls out of his chair and attempts to wrestle Ben for the remote. Then Bev throws herself down on the floor as well, and Mike leans over the couch and onto Eddie, and Eddie settles in the corner of the couch and closes his eyes and tilts his head back.

From somewhere under both Ben and Bev, Richie says, “Do not fall asleep, Kaspbrak.”

“Too late,” Mike says, and wraps both arms around Eddie and puts his head on Eddie’s stomach. Eddie doesn’t open his eyes but pats the top of Mike’s head and accepts his new role as a pillow.

“Okay, I’m fighting you next,” Richie says.

Patiently Ben explains, “No, Richie, it’s ‘I play _winner_.’”

“Both of you are cheating, give me my Eds.”

“I can take him,” Mike says.

Eddie pats Mike’s head again. “Don’t break him.” Then he remembers and sits up abruptly. “Jeez, is your back okay?”

Mike, who also bolted upright when Eddie did, puts his weight on one elbow and turns to look at Richie expectantly. Ben and Bev also sit up, Ben’s hands up in the air like he’s being arrested.

Richie, who is flushed and wild-haired on the floor with his glasses hanging off one ear, gapes at Eddie for a moment and then says, _“Fuck_ my back!”

“Well, not while we’re here,” Ben says.

Bev drops back onto him and Richie rolls under the coffee table.

Mike puts his head back on Eddie’s stomach. “This okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He settles down slowly; he wouldn’t have allowed this kind of contact only months ago, but Mike doesn’t mean anything by it and apparently they’re all a bunch of children again.

The things that came before are gone. This is better. He’ll worry about the leftovers in the morning, or make Richie deal with them.

He’s absolutely having cake for breakfast, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning explained: Richie fucks up and calls Eddie an endearment and then gets self-conscious about it. This is not how Eddie _planned_ to come out to the Losers, but he was already intending to do it, he just didn't expect Richie to do it either so fast or so stupidly. The Losers are predictably accepting, but Eddie has to sit down.
> 
> ...
> 
> And that's the end! The whole story was kind of inspired by that moment when Eddie freaks and falls through the shower curtain and Richie's just like, "...Yeah, need a shower with a glass door instead," and it took me _this long_ to get there and it didn't even end up being my favorite scene I wrote for this.
> 
> Also I had several VIVID daydreams on my roadtrip, which means that I now expect this series to include 1) Things that Happen After Eddie Lives, 2) Things that Happen After Beverly Leaves (which I'll start working on shortly), 3) Richie Tozier's as-yet untitled coming-out comedy routine mentioned in this chapter, and 4) Bill's as-yet untitled reconciliation with his wife and a final send-off to the Losers in this verse. It's gonna be really dramatic, guys, and of course Richie and Eddie will have their screentime in the sequel pieces, so if you want to stick around that'll happen soon. Also my brain kind of vomited another IT-fic at me and said, "Magic teenage Losers with Eldritch powers," so I guess that's gonna have to happen too at some point.
> 
> If you like this work/have questions/want to see content related to my whole writing process for this thing, consider checking out my sideblog at [tthael](https://tthael.tumblr.com/). I got a job yesterday so I don't think I'll always be able to keep up with this rapid updating schedule, and I have to go rapidly learn a lot about New Kids on the Block, but I'd love to see you there.
> 
> As always thank you for reading, you can find me in the comments. Thank you so much!

**Author's Note:**

> So my buddy [soft-tozier](https://soft-tozier.tumblr.com/) reblogged [this post](https://be-you-tiful-larry.tumblr.com/post/187777731407/dishelved-boys) which includes a picture of Bill Hader that made me have to reconsider who I am as a human being, so you get Bev sending Bill pictures of Richie trying on suits. Thank you, Sammie.


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